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OLD SEAPORT TOWNS OF THE SOUTH 




Old Seaport Towns 
of the South 



By 

Mildred Cram 

Drawings by 

Allan G. Cram 



New York 
Doddy Mead ^ Company 






Copyright, 19 17, 
By Dodd, Mead and Company, Inc. 



/ 

OCT 30 1917 



©C1.A476814 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Introducing — Ourselves, and the Scope 

OF THE Work i 

II. Lady Baltimore in a Mackintosh, Some- 
thing ABOUT Annapolis and a Great 
Deal about Rain 12 

III. Which Contains a Trolley Trip and a 

Laundry Grievance 43 

IV. On to Wilmington, a Wreck, and a Lit- 

tle Dissertation on Pullman Cars 72 

V. Palms and Spanish Moss at Last, and 
We Make Our Bow to Aristocratic 
Madame Charleston 99 

VI. A Confession of Laziness in Savannah 

AND A Step Further South to "Jax" 132 

VII. An Afternoon in Old St. Augustine and 

A Chronicle of Tire Trouble . .158 

VIII. Tampa, Spaniards and the Greek Sponge 

Fleet at Tampa 193 

IX. 'Way Down in Pensacola, Seaplanes, 
Submarines, and Lunch with an Ad- 
miral, with a Storm as an Anti- 
climax . . 223 

[v] 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

X. A Day in Mobile and On to New Or- 
leans Where We Meet a Very Ca- 
pable Young Woman 257 

XI. Creoles, Pralines and a Little History 289 

XII. Galveston, the Optimist 318 

XIII. Key West at Dawn 332 

XIV. Wind, Waves and Home Again . . . 353 



[vi] 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

A Mirage of the Mediterranean in Florida 

Frontispiece 

FACING 
„ PAGE 

I Held an Umbrella Over Allan While He 

Sketched the Big Transport "Grekland" . 26' 

The One- and Two-storied Houses Reminded 

Us of Clovelly 36 

A Cluster of Small Sailing Boats and Dories . 40 ^ 

The Ferry Slip at Norfolk 50 ' 

The Navy Yard Gate, Portsmouth .... 56 

It Was Still Very Early When the Ferry Drew 
Away from Norfolk 74' 

Long Hours of Lazy Contemplation . . . icx) 

Charleston Is Caught Into a Dream of the 

Romantic Past no' 

The Beautiful South Portal of St. Philip's 
Church 118 

The Severity of the Pillared Portico is Relieved 

by Delicate Wrought Iron Railings . . . 128 

Great Ships Come Eighteen Miles from the Sea 

to Savannah's Front Door Step .... 140' 

A Magnificent Avenue of Live Oaks . . . 148' 

[viij 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



FACING 
PAGE 



The Spaniards Called Their Fort the Castle 

San Marco i66"' 

We Could Chat Comfortably with the Captain 

without Stirring from Our Garden Bench . 198' 

The Hotel and Its Gardens were Alluring . 210' 

The Greeks Had Said Their Prayers and Were 

at Work Again 220'^ 

A Great Floating Hangar, Truly Magnificent 

in Proportion . ; 240*^ 

Ships from the Mexican Gulf and the Carib- 
bean 266' 

You Remember Jim Bludso, Don't You? I'll 

Show You His World 284V/ 

This is the Real New Orleans! 292 "^ 

Stuccoed Brick Walls, Arcades and Cool Inner 

Courts 300*^ 

A Grain Elevator, as Grim and Sombre as a 
Mediaeval Fortress 326 

Dolphins Cavorted at Sunset, Turning Beauti- 
ful Somersaults 336'' 

The Boisterous Wind Rattled the Cocoa Palms 348"^ 



[viii] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS OF THE SOUTH 




OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 
OF THE SOUTH 

CHAPTER I 

INTRODUCING— OURSELVES, AND THE SCOPE OF 
THE WORK 

HILE our taxi hung a moment on 
the edge of Broadway we peered 
through the rain-spangled windows 
and sighed, like true provincial New 
Yorkers, because we were leaving our city. 
Broadway cut north and south like a rainbow. 
Electric signs dripped in liquid sheets or burst 
into fiery spray. High on the housetops huge 
figures trod the darkness for an instant and 
disappeared. Lights blinked, glittered, ex- 
ploded in multi-coloured pinwheels, ran up and 
down and dizzily around, shot into the sky, 
fell in a shower of prismatic sparks. . . . We 
sighed, for we were leaving New York, and it 
still had its octopus arms around us. 

Our taxi pranced a little like an impatient 
[ 1 ] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

carriage horse, the traffic policeman signalled 
and the city streamed past again. It was like 
being in a fast undersea boat rushing along 
the bottom of a luminous ocean. The driver 
manoeuvred a wide curve at top speed and 
brought us up to the Pennsylvania Station with 
a flourish just where a red-capped porter an- 
gled on the edge of the curb for passengers with 
suitcases. 

But it wasn't until we were caught in the 
pie-shaped wedge of travellers at the ticket gate 
that we realised how irrevocable our going 
away was. And then we had a chilling sensa- 
tion of exile, as if we were leaving all the things 
we liked best — friends, fun, work. New York — 
and were not going to find anything to take 
their place. That is the worst of being a New 
Yorker; like a breathless joy-rider in a scenic 
railway car, you shut your eyes and shriek, "Oh, 
isn't it fun! There's nothing like it in the 
world!" Forgetting that beyond the wall of 
glittering towers, across the moat of rivers, there 
are cities and people, great activities and amaz- 
ing beauty. Not only the ashes of cities and 
people, but the living heart of them, the "rest 
of America." 

Waiting for the six o'clock train to Balti- 
more, we felt a little unsteady, as if the violent 

[ 2 ] 



OF THE SOUTH 

motion of our familiar world had ceased. We 
felt, to tell the truth, like sailors ashore. 

We were going to our native South which 
we left before memory began, and which had 
come to mean, through parental reminiscences, 
a place of sun, chivalry, romance and Uncle 
Remus. Somewhere in our obscure conscious- 
ness, not altogether wiped out by a New Eng- 
land childhood, a European youth, and a New 
York maturity, we bear the impress of a South- 
ern ancestry — Catholics who came to America 
with Lord Baltimore, and thanks to a king and 
queen who were recklessly generous with Mary- 
land, settled themselves in what is now^ a whole 
county. Besides bequeathing to us a love of 
dark churches and incense, a taste for hot- 
breads and an incurably romantic turn of mind, 
they left nothing to posterity but their freed 
slaves who proudly bore and still flaunt the fam- 
ily name. We are always running across dusky 
"relatives," even as far north as New York. 

"Lo'd, chile," a cook of ours once said to me, 
"was yo' maw's name the same as mine? Why, 
gracious goodness, Miss Mildred, we-all's the 
same family!" 

It was almost more than I could bear, for 
she was as black as the ace of spades, as black 
as a bottle of ink, as black as soot. But she 

[ 3 ] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

fortunately explained, as she stirred the corn- 
bread batter, "M}^ great gran'paw was yo' gran'- 
paw's body servant." And you can imagine 
how gratifying it was to hear that my great 
grandpa was such a howling dude I Afterwards 
I used the bit of information to overawe the 
cook, just as I can twist any Irish maid around 
my finger by informing her with an exalted and 
fanatic gleam in my eyes that I was blessed by 
Pius X and kissed the hand of Pope Benedict 
when he was a Cardinal. That and a piece of 
lucky coral from Naples (for use on Italians) 
work wonders in settling domestic problems, 
and domestics. While I thought about my 
Southern ancestors and wondered whether they 
would help me to love the South, the ticket gate 
opened and we squeezed through to our train. 
"New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore." As 
Hewlett would say, "God, what a traverse!" 

The way to Baltimore lies across flat coun- 
try. After the train plunges under the river, 
where certain sensitive travellers stop up their 
ears as if they were in the SImplon, It goes hand 
in hand with suburban "locals" for miles be- 
fore it can make up its mind to start off alone 
to Philadelphia. From your Pullman, where 
you lounge with the hatless, permanent languor 
which means "I am an adventurer; I am going 

[ 4 ] 



OF THE SOUTH 

far," you can look into the brilliantly lighted, 
crowded suburban trains and pity the rows of 
tired business men screened by pink evening 
papers. But there is nothing spectacular about 
the scenery. Even when we pressed our noses 
against the rain-spattered windows and stared 
out, we could see nothing but long strings of 
electric lights linking town to town. It was 
more fun to lean back in our chairs and stare 
at the people in the car. Most of them were 
school children returning to school after the 
Christmas holidays, the girls full of funny lit- 
tle affectations, the boys steeped in a perfectly 
transparent and artificial melancholy. They 
were having such a good time, each with his 
soul-satisfying egoism! Watching them, we 
were envious a little, and then we began to see 
how funny they were and didn't want their 
youth but simply blessed them for it. And our 
thoughts turned to the South again. 

"I am going there with my mind as blank as 
a wax-coated phonograph record," I thought, 
"ready to receive the myriad impressions that 
will carve little hair-lines all over my receptive 
brain, recording colours and voices, the smell 
of the sea, the drift of clouds and the sun on a 
garden wall. Perhaps, when they put me be- 
tween the covers of a book, I shall sing! After 

[ 5 ] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

all," I went on, shutting my eyes, "an Italian 
wrote the best book of American travel I have 
ever read. He saw us not only as others see us, 
but as we are. That was because he didn't un- 
derstand us at all. Out of the unfamiliar, like 
a magician drawing yards of ribbon from the 
crown of a silk hat, he evoked the picturesque. 
A negro was as strange and colourful to him 
as an East Indian, and a Cherokee burial 
mound was as suggestive as an Etruscan tomb. 
If he didn't like something about us, he trod 
gaily on our toes. If he thought Brownsville, 
Idaho, an ugly, dirty, sun-baked wilderness, he 
said so because by no possible chance did his 
mother's third cousin live there. On one page 
he treated us with devastating ridicule and on 
the next he took us to his heart for something 
we are ashamed of. . . . Out of the whole 
here emerged a composite American, energetic, 
inventive and provincial, with a voice like a 
rasp and a sentimental interior, taciturn about 
everything except business, turning his back on 
sunsets and dawns to read a newspaper, the 
builder of a new world, of all the men on earth 
(the only one who is engaged in creating a civi- 
lisation. After all, an epic hero in ill-fitting 
clothes, Ulysses in peg-tops and stub-toed 
boots." 

[ 6 ] 



OF THE SOUTH 

I opened my eyes again and rubbed the 
blurred windows to look out. The train was 
rushing across a dark plain. All I could see 
was a smudge of black smoke full of rocketing 
sparks; and my mind turned to our trip again. 
. . . We were going to travel fast, by train and 
by boat, all the way down the South Atlantic 
Coast, around the Gulf of Mexico to Galves- 
ton. We were going to see the myriad activi- 
ties of nineteen seaports. I wondered whether 
it would be possible to follow the advice of the 
up-to-date slogan, "Keep your eye on the 
South!" It was, after all, a fairly large slice 
of the world to focus on. There is the old 
South and the new, as different as night and 
day. One is a place of gardens and sunshine, 
golden jessamine and honeysuckle, and the 
melancholy beauty of dignified decay. The 
other is a place of factories and harbours, active, 
vigorous and purposeful. "Keep your eye on 
the South!" I would try. 

"The spectacle of force," I thought, "is with- 
in our optic capabilities, but a true conception 
of force comes through a more complicated 
sensible faculty. The might of machinery, the 
movement of railways and ships, digging down 
in the earth and building up in the sky are all 
manifestations of material force — majestic, su- 

[ 7 ] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

perb, visible manifestations of that hidden inner 
force which is the imperishable urge of the 
living spirit to creation. The force of a single 
spirit is as great as the force of the whole uni- 
verse. Behind the birth and growth of a city, the 
building of a factory or a railway, the dredg- 
ing of a harbour, there are countless human 
dreams. What a pity that the immeasurable 
power in material creation cannot be turned 
partially into artistic creation! If one-third of 
the energy which goes into modern commercial 
achievement could be applied to the plastic, 
George Moore would have no need to bewail 
the death of art. But beauty is, after all, a mat- 
ter of individual conception. The modern artist 
is surrounded by factories, an intricate tangle of 
railroad tracks, dry docks, furnaces, kilns, 
gashes in the face of the earth, warehouses, 
steel shops, iron tubes, steam, straining truck 
horses, sweating labourers, grain elevators and 
whalebacks, bridges, trestles, dredges, the 
smooth-thrusting piston and rod, white-hot 
furnaces, murky tunnels, crowds dressed all alike 
in sombre clothes, a vast and immeasurable con- 
centration of millions of people upon material 
things. 

"Out of this, life as it is, he must weave an 
imaginative fabric of his own. This is the 

[ 8 ] 



OF THE SOUTH 

source of his Inspiration, the most suggestive, 
the most majestic, the surest source of inspira- 
tion for art since art began. Not the soft hills 
and the pale skies of Greece, of course; not the 
emotional, ardent life of the Renaissance at 
Florence; not the poetry of old England or the 
tenderness of old France, but steel and fire and 
swarming labourers! Who could watch the 
godlike activity of a ship's engine room, the 
graceful reachings and retreats, the smooth pre- 
cision, the leashed virility of the thrusting steel 
rods, without being sure that here is art?" 

This thought took me back to studios in New 
York where men I know are covering canvases 
with squares, patches and whirligigs in imita- 
tion, they say, of contemporary life. They call 
themselves modernists and say that life to-day 
has no form. Chaotic colour, a shattering of 
sounds — sensation! And they splash rainbows 
in interpretation, achieving nothing but a con- 
tortion of past art, rehashing El Greco, the 
Egyptians, the Etruscans and the Byzantine. 
They put their hands over their eyes and groan 
when you speak of form. 

"The world," they say, "is chaotic — we paint 
what we see." Marinetti, the arch-priest (or 
is he arch-fiend?) of modernism, taught them 
to do that. And yet, to focus our mind myopic- 

f 9] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

ally, the whole of America is absorbed in one 
vast struggle for power and still more power, 
bigness and still more bigness, riches and still 
more riches, with a unity of purpose which 
makes the building of the Pyramids look like 
child's play, and the trade of Phoenicia a min- 
iature game of chess with ships as pawns. If 
the voyage of Ulysses was epic, if Hannibal's 
crossing of the Alps was heroic, if the activity 
of Venice was inspiring, if mediaeval Italy was 
poetic, then America, to-day, is all of these. 
When Ghirlandaio painted his Florentine street 
scenes across the chapel wall of Santa Maria 
Novella, he was painting a homely common- 
place. There is no reason why Brangwyn's 
nude workmen should not some day take on 
the quality of aloofness, the allurement of the 
unfamiliar which make Giovanna and Tito 
creatures of poetic fancy. 

I asked Allan, who was flattening his lovely 
nose against the window, if he didn't agree with 
me that longshoremen are as picturesque as me- 
diaeval saints. 

"I'm not saying they aren't," he answered, 
looking bewildered. He had been thinking 
about aeroplanes, and saints took him a little 

by surprise. 

r io 1 



OF THE SOUTH 

"That makes me think of a story," I said. 
''There were two darkies who met on the road. 
One of them said to the other, *I heah you-all 
is married, Sam.' 

" 'Well,' said Sam, scratching his head, *I 
ain't sayin' I ain't.' 

"The first darkey lost his temper. 'I ain't 
askin' you is you ain't,' he yelled. 'I'se askin' 
you ain't you is!' " 

"There is a better one than that," Allan said. 
"A darkey was on trial for shooting at another 
darkey. 

" 'Amos,' said the judge who was trying the 
case, 'what provocation did Moses give you for 
attempting to kill him?' 

" 'Jedge,' said Amos, 'what would you-all do 
if a man done called you a nappy-headed, black 
houn' and a damn fool?' 

" 'Well, Amos,' said the judge, 'no one ever 
called me such things. I'm not a hound, nor 
am I a nappy-headed damn fool.' 

" 'Well, Jedge,' cried Amos desperately, 
'what would you do if you was called jest 
whichever kind of a damn fool you is!' " 

I was still wondering when the train drew 
into Baltimore and another angling red-cap 
landed us neatly and led us, like a magnet lur- 
ing pins, to a taxi-cab. 

[H] 




CHAPTER II 

LADY BALTIMORE IN A MACKINTOSH, SOMETHING 

ABOUT ANNAPOLIS AND A GREAT DEAL ABOUT 

RAIN 

AM afraid that this chapter will be 
mostly about rain. It was raining 
when the Baltimore taxi, a very live- 
ly taxi indeed, skidded through miles 
of lovely residential streets to the Hotel Ren- 
nert. It was still raining when I looked out of 
my window for the last time before going to 
bed. And I could see nothing of Baltimore ex- 
cept a tall, thin office building illuminated, like 
a comic opera star, by a cluster of searchlights. 
I crawled into an enormously wide bed and sank 
down on the fat pillows with a groan of pleas- 
ure. I was tired; I hadn't believed that leav- 
ing New York could tire me so. I had rather 
believed that going away just as things got tre- 
mendously interesting might act as a rest-cure. 
Absurd provincial! The rest of the world, so 
far, had been just as exciting as my own fifty 
square blocks of Gotham. The taxi had nosed 

[12] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

through traffic in Baltimore with the sickening 
speed we thought we had left behind when wc 
dismissed our "black and white" at the Penn- 
sylvania Station. The lobby of the Rennert 
had been as crowded as a New York lobby; 
page boys wandered up and down singing 
''Mees-ter Brown, Mees-ter Krinsky, M^^j-ter 
Trum" in nasal voices. Negroes with nasal 
voices where I had expected to hear Uncle Re- 
mus cadences! Other page boys spun the re- 
volving doors and made futile grabs for the 
valises of departing and arriving travelling 
salesmen. New York again! "Bother," I 
thought, "this isn't the South." But the ele- 
vator was lazy and the little cakes of soap in 
the bathroom were stamped with the sure 
enough name, Baltimore — Baltimore! 

It was still raining in staccato patterings 
when I went to sleep. And I was lulled further 
by a chorus of men's voices, coming through a 
radiator from some dining-room or banquet hall 
downstairs, singing "Good night, ladies" in 
close harmony. It must have been a boys' 
"frat" party (the boys aged fifty-three or there- 
abouts), for no one sings "Good night, ladies" 
in this day and generation. "Merrily we roll 
along, roll along, roll along," they sang, as I 
sank down into the fat pillows and closed my 

[IS] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

eyes, ''Merrily we roll along, o-o-o-ver the dark 
blue seas. . . ." 

It was still raining when I woke. The spot- 
light had been turned off and the giddy office 
building thrust its head into scudding black 
clouds. We had brought all sorts of things to 
wear in warm weather — Palm Beach suits (to 
be worn under overcoats!), straw hats and cool 
silks. I had pictured myself, before starting, 
in what the railroad posters call "sunny climes," 
cavorting on white beaches, being wheeled about 
n bicycle chairs under palms and moss-draped 
oaks; I had even contemplated, further south, 
a helmet and white linen sport things. B Jt 
one by one, all the way to Key West, I shipped 
my trunks full of summer finery back to New 
York. Packages of winter flannels, furs, muf- 
flers and felt hats, packed in a frantic hurry 
by my puzzled family, caught up with me at 
Norfolk, Savannah, Pensacola and New Or- 
leans. It was an extraordinary winter, they say. 
But then it always is extraordinary — disagree- 
ably so, of course — when I travel. If I should 
go to Greenland, the mercury would climb out 
of the top of the thermometer. Local colour 
skips before me like an elusive flea, so that when 
I write travel articles I always have to put my- 
self down as a liar or else take all my facts 



OF THE SOUTH 

from the penny guide books and trust to luck. 
The South may be warm, and it may possibly 
be sunny, but if I let either word creep into 
this book you will know that I was writing 
through the top of my hat and holding the ink- 
well up my sleeve. It rained in Baltimore; I 
opened my eyes to a sodden and soaked Balti- 
more, I left a sodden and soaked Baltimore a 
week later. Allan and I introduced ourselves 
to the Monument City by starting out in a frigid 
drizzle of fine rain to buy rubbers. The boy in 
charge of the revolving doors, overjoyed to 
have something conversational to do, explained 
that we could find a shoe store "one block to 
the right and then down," where he believed 
we could buy a right good pair of gums. Then 
he tucked us into the revolving door and sent 
us spinning out into Baltimore. 

But we lost ourselves at the corner and had 
to ask directions of a policeman who was stand- 
ing under an umbrella and bawling at traffic 
from behind a mud-guard, as secure from the 
splashings of passing motors as a lady in a 
limousine. 

"One block to the left and then on," said he, 
in a tone so languid that I fancy they spoil their 
policemen in Baltimore. 

After all, it doesn't matter how you introduce 

[15] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

yourself to a city. You may make elaborate 
preparations to have the meeting propitious, 
and then find that you have shaken hands form- 
ally and have forgotten to look into the city's 
eyes. You may blindfold yourself and have 
yourself taken to the top of the tallest build- 
ing, so that when the bandage is removed you 
will be struck dumb with amazement and sur- 
prise. Or you may walk around the corner on 
a rainy day and run bang into the city wearing 
her prettiest gown and smiling her most cordial 
smile. And she may, just because you look 
bedraggled and forlorn, ask you to tea. For 
cities are like people — they are at their best 
when you expect the least of them. 

Baltimore was beautiful in the rain, and buy- 
ing overshoes was as good as any other way to 
introduce ourselves to her. With my muddy 
shoes on the knees of a shoe clerk in the first 
shop we came to, I learned how to find my way 
about the city. The shoe clerk was a sort of 
audible civic map with a bump of locality so 
highly developed that, like a homing pigeon, 
he could have been blindfolded in Baltimore, 
led to Hong Kong and started back again with 
nothing but a pocket compass and a pen-knife. 
He explained Baltimore while he fitted enor- 
mous rubbers on my not so enormous shoes. 

[16] 



OF THE SOUTH 

Charles Street runs north and south, Baltimore 
Street runs east and west, and from them the 
other streets are numbered east and west, north 
and south, on a very orderly plan that holds 
good everywhere except in the centre of the 
city, where there is a hopeless confusion of di- 
rections and intentions and a perfect maelstrom 
of ways. Even the shoe clerk became slightly 
confused when he tried to explain the shop- 
ping district. You are likely to go 'round and 
'round the same block like a child starting out 
to stick a paper tail on a paper donkey and 
sticking it, instead, on the piano stool. Before 
you can get your sense of direction in hand and 
start off confidently east or west, north or south, 
you behave as I did when I first went to Lon- 
don and circled Piccadilly four times before 
I could determine on Regent Street. 

To be sure that he had made it explicit, the 
shoe clerk went with us to the shop door and 
did the whole thing over again, in pantomime, 
on the sidewalk. 

"Now remember, Charles Street runs north 
and south, Baltimore east and west." 

"All that for two pairs of gums," I said to 
Allan, as we splashed off hopefully. 

"You are in the South," Allan answered. 

Of course we were. I had forgotten, because 
[17] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

no one had said "cy-ah" for car and no one had 
said "I reckon" for "I guess," and no one had 
called Allan "Colonel" and the negroes had said 
"Sure" instead of "Yessah." The South? Well, 
perhaps, but not the South I had been led to 
expect. We set out to look for the Charles- 
Baltimore axis so that we could revolve on it 
with the familiarity of old residents. In our 
pursuit we crossed both of the streets a dozen 
times, but we never did find out where they 
crossed each other. Still, one chimera is as 
good as another, and we saw Baltimore while 
we were playing hide-and-seek with this one. 
The city seemed to me a little like Genoa, sub- 
stantial, rich, massive architecturally, with its 
feet in the water and its head in the clouds, 
pompous, very orderly and always flavoured 
with the heady smell of wharves and ships. 
Like Genoa, it spills steeply down-hill to the 
harbour. And the business streets, where dig- 
nified merchants rub elbows with sea captains, 
stevedores and sailors, are only a block or two 
away from the wharves. And yet Baltimore 
had a narrow escape from being an inland city. 
It is over two hundred miles from the Atlantic 
Ocean, and only the obliging width and depth 
of Chesapeake Bay make it possible for Balti- 
more to call herself a great seaport. Big ships 

[18] 



OF THE SOUTH 

and little ships, any sort of ships at all, sail up 
the broad Chesapeake, through Patapsco Bay to 
the very front door of the city. Some of them 
anchor within sight of the domed tower of the 
City Hall and the Post Office campanile, so 
close to the heart of the city that ships' bells 
can be set by the B. & O. clock. 

While I should have hunted up the Board of 
Trade to find out all I could about exports and 
imports and how many million dollars' worth 
of business floats up and down Chesapeake Bay 
in a year, I played truant and went with Allan 
to the water-front. It was more fun to splash 
up and down the docks than to collect statistics, 
percentages, estimates, pamphlets, prophecies 
and Board of Trade superlatives. I could see 
for myself that Baltimore is rich, important and 
powerful, and that her municipal wharves en- 
tertain the biggest and the littlest ships that float. 
I could see for myself what the magnificent 
future, "after the war," holds for Baltimore in 
the way of great and greater commercial power. 
All the ravings of her inspired press agents, 
and she has many, every citizen from the oldest 
living inhabitant to the youngest pickaninny 
combining to blow the civic iiorn, could not 
have added to my admiration. So if you ex- 
pect to find out how many tins of canned oysters 

[19] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

are shipped in a week from Baltimore to oyster- 
less Middle West cities, you need not turn an- 
other page. I know that Baltimore is rich and 
successful, but she is also aristocratic and she 
resents the shoutings of her voluntary press 
agents. She has always lived in fine houses, 
she has always worn rich silks and rare laces; 
it is in her blood to entertain beautifully and 
lavishly and to be gracious, proud and incon- 
spicuous. Baltimore is the impeccable matron 
of American cities, and I am not sure which of 
the two, Baltimore or her distinguished grand- 
mother, Charleston, is the most perfect example 
of American aristocracy. And to go on with 
the allegory — Boston is Charleston's unmarried, 
middle-aged daughter, a trifle more austere than 
her married sister, Baltimore, opinionated, 
scrupulous, intelligent and dowdy. New York 
is a free-lance person of whom none of them 
approve, but they steal away to visit her now 
and then, to smoke one of her cigarettes, sip at 
one of her cocktails and admire her gowns. St. 
Louis. St. Paul, Detroit, Jacksonville and Chi- 
cago are all "young things"; they haven't de- 
cided whether to take after Baltimore or Bos- 
ton, or to follow in the unholy footsteps of the 
wicked and fascinating and altogether too gay 
New York. In the meantime, they wear very 

[20] 



OF THE SOUTH 

short skirts and are openly proud of being rich; 
they drive fast automobiles, and dance and talk 
at the top of their voices and spend a great deal 
of money. 

I wouldn't dream of talking about Balti- 
more's bank account. It has been accumulating 
during two hundred years of peace and pros- 
perity. Even since the Barons of Baltimore, 
those likable Irishmen from County Longford, 
established the town, its lucky star has burned 
unfalteringly. Baltimore seemed to have been 
blest with a happy destiny. It was not attacked 
during the Revolutionary War, all of the fight- 
ing being done with sticks and stones and the 
vituperative tongues of its mob leaders. Dur- 
ing the War of 1812, although England attacked 
by land and sea, Baltimore slapped the enemy 
so soundly that he never returned to ofTer the 
other cheek. Francis Scott Key was so elated 
by the American victory that he wrote "The 
Star-Spangled Banner" in celebration of the 
tattered flag that still floated above Fort Mc- 
Henry after an all-night bombardment by the 
British. Hats off to Key, who could rhyme in 
the midst of battle, but why, oh, why are his 
verses so hard to remember and so horribly 
hard to sing? "What so prou-oudly we hay-il" 

[21] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

is one of the poetic jaw-breakers that make na- 
tional anthems sore trials. 

Baltimore recovered from the War of 1812 
with the short convalescence of the victorious. 
And during the Civil War, while the people 
of Baltimore were torn between North and 
South, the city itself was outside the war zone 
and did not share in the Southern tragedy of 
destruction and financial ruin. It was not until 
11904 that the lucky star blinked out for a mo- 
ment and a voracious and implacable fire de- 
stroyed over a thousand buildings in the com- 
mercial part of the city. I am awfully tempted 
to say something about that famous phoenix 
which has risen, in literature, so many millions 
of times from the ashes. But this is what really 
happened. Baltimore looked at the smoulder- 
ing ruins of herself, said, "Oh, bother!" and 
put on a new dress. Where the rows and rows 
of red brick houses and red brick warehouses 
and red brick office buildings had been, an im- 
pressive stone and granite district appeared 
miraculously. The lucky star came out from 
behind the obscuring cloud and has been shin- 
ing ever since. 

The rest of Baltimore's history seems to be a 
recital of achievements, as if the inhabitants 
had had an overwhelming ambition to be first in 

[22] 



OF THE SOUTH 

war, first in peace, and first in everything else: 
the first gas company, the first railroad, the 
first locomotive, the first balloon ascension, the 
first telegraph message, the first electric railway. 
One has a mental picture of the whole popu- 
lation absorbed in invention. It is even dan- 
gerous to launch a bon mot without taking out 
a patent. Everything clever and modern and 
indispensable seems to have originated in Bal- 
timore. But if you should ask a Baltimorean 
what his city's chief source of fame is, he will 
probably answer "Whiskey" or "Beautiful wo- 
men," or, if he is blind to the other two virtues, 
"Monuments." And if he happens to be a 
gourmet, he will shut his eyes and answer, 
"Chicken a la Maryland and oysters." Balti- 
more is that sort of city; you love her for her 
infinite variety. 

I loved her for her dignity and because at 
the end of her teeming business streets there is 
always a glimpse of tangled masts and spars 
and slanting funnels. Time that should have 
been given to Walter's Art Museum, to Millet 
and Meissonier and Rosa Bonheur, I gave to 
the water-front streets and to staring into the 
dusty windows of ship chandlers' shops at an- 
chors and chains, gasolene motors, tarred rope, 
compasses and rubber boots. Hours that I 

[23] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

should have given to the modern frescoes by 
Blashfield, Turner and La Farge in the Court 
House I gave to the fish market. I was not as 
mad, perhaps, as I seemed to be, for the fish 
market was a place of striking beauty. There 
were heaps and mounds of silver fish, irides- 
cent, white-bellied, glistening; the market floor 
was wet and shiny, the high-arched roof was 
full of shadows, and everywhere, in groups of 
two and three, buyers and sellers bargained 
over the dead fish, lifting them up, tossing 
them back again so that there were silver flashes 
from hand to hand. 

When Allan and I were children we were 
never in doubt as to what we were "going to 
be" when we grew up. We were sailors from 
the time we were old enough to know the dif- 
ference between a ship and a cradle. We sailed 
.around the world three times before we were 
nine — in the dining-room table turned upside 
down. Even in those nursery days we had a 
Conradian taste for sandy shoals and deep jun- 
gles, although where we could have formed the 
taste is a mystery, unless it came to us through 
hereditary memory. When we were nearer 
twelve we really sailed down the sea, not in the 
dining-room table but in a dory rigged some- 
how with a top-heavy sail made of a linen sheet. 

[24] 



OF THE SOUTH 

We had all of Buzzard's Bay as our ocean, and 
sailed so far out into it in our absurd cockle- 
shell that on two different occasions we lost 
sight of land altogether. This was a risky 
business for children, but it was glorious fun, 
and with the adventure, the wind, the salt spray, 
the nearness and adorable fearfulness of the 
sea we were dedicated to a lifelong worship. 
We prance at the very sight of a ship, and if 
we could afford it we would spend our live? 
making 'round-the-world trips in tramp steam- 
ers and leisurely sailing vessels bound from 
New York to Hong Kong and return. We are 
happiest when we are leaning on a ship's ra^l 
in some blazing hot southern port; we are most 
ecstatic when we are aboard a steamer outward 
bound, when crowded life drops behind the 
horizon with the towers and pinnacles of New 
York and there is nothing on the rim of the 
round, round world but clouds and the long, 
black streamers of smoke rolling back from the 
ship's funnels. 

So in Baltimore we gravitated naturally to- 
ward Light Street and the Pratt Street wharves, 
not only because the town slopes that way and 
we followed the line of least resistance, but be- 
cause we were lured that way by the smell of 
the sea. The produce fleet held us for hours. 

[25] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

The little schooners and weather-beaten iuggers 
come to town at the crack of dawn, bringing 
fruits and vegetables or staggering under 
mounds of fresh oysters, and we liked to watch 
the confusion of the landing and unloading. A 
swarm of hucksters and itinerant dealers ap- 
peared on the wharves, and there was always 
a tangle of delivery wagons and trucks standing 
wheel to wheel along the water-front. We 
liked to follow the morning's supplies over to 
the Lexington Market, where they were sorted 
and arranged to catch Lady Baltimore's eye 
when she did her shopping later in the morn- 
ing. 

The famous Baltimore ^'clipper" has vanished 
from the seas together with America's suprem- 
acy in fast sailing craft. The wide-winged, 
narrow clippers used to fly from port to port 
with incredible speed, Yankee ships and Yankee 
crews writing the story of American courage 
and seamanship in big letters across the most 
romantic page in maritime history. Ocean lin- 
ers and ungainly, weather-beaten transports and 
tramps have taken their place. We saw several 
of the plucky blockade-runners at Baltimore, 
some of them emblazoned with huge neutral 
Bags for the information of U-boat captains 
who do not alwavs respect their neutrality, some 

[26] 



OF THE SOUTH 

of them as grim and sombre and businesslike 
as battle cruisers. I held an umbrella over 
Allan, like an attendant slave, while he sketched 
the big transport Grekland. The ship herself 
was indifferent to our homage for she was re- 
ceiving a cargo of grain for some hunger-pinch- 
ed European nation, but the swarm of painters 
who were covering her battered plates with 
checkerboard squares of red, craved immortal- 
ity. They caught sight of Allan and shouted 
their utter willingness to pose indefinitely. 

"Hey! Put me in, Mister!" 

"Hi, you! Don't forget me!" 

And when the sketch was finished they 
hoisted themselves up to the Grekland's deck, 
like agile monkeys shinnying up a stick, and 
came running ashore to see themselves as 
"ithers" saw them. Allan had to make a dash 
for it, for he hadn't put the painters in at all, 
and he couldn't have told them that they "clut- 
tered up the composition." If he had, the 
painters might have cluttered up the artist, the 
sketch portfolio and the attendant slave. So we 
ran at top speed toward Light Street, splatter- 
ing ourselves with the mud of many puddles. 

It rained and it rained. Wherever we went 
we advanced under that dripping umbrella, 
and since Allan tops me by a foot, I caught all 

[27] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

the drippings on my hat brim, whence they 
seeped down my coat collar and into my shoes 
again; my skirts were soggy, my muff looked 
like an immersed Angora kitten. And it was 
cold! But for one thing I was grateful — Bal- 
timore traffic is light. We dashed from side- 
walk to sidewalk only to find that the nearest 
automobile was a block away, while the traffic 
policemen leaned on their mud-guards and 
shouted with laughter. So we learned our les- 
son and sauntered sedately in front of street 
cars, trusting to Southern chivalry, even in in- 
animate things, to save us. 

The streets are as well-paved as the promised 
golden paths of Paradise, and laid with a va- 
ried assortment of brick, asphalt, wood-block and 
macadam. Baltimore thoroughfares begin with 
one colour and end with another; they start out 
paved with smooth cobbles and wind up with 
an artless design done in pink brick. The re- 
sult rivals the famous coat of the Biblical Jo- 
seph for kaleidoscopic variety, and makes one 
wonder whether a futurist effect in tinted as- 
phalt might not give Fifth Avenue a decided. 
cachet! 

But in spite of its frivolous paving stones, 
Baltimore is always discreet. Even on the out- 
skirts of the city there is more or less dignity. 

[28] 



OF THE SOUTH 

I did not see any tenements at all, only rows and 
rows of little red brick houses, each with its 
short flight of white steps leading to the front 
door. And I discovered that the middle-class 
women of Baltimore spend their lives in a futile 
effort to keep those eternal rows of white steps 
clean. They scrub in the morning, they scrub 
in the afternoon, they are still scrubbing when 
night falls. And as soon as the steps are clean, 
the dirty boots of "mere man" tramp over 
them again. If I were a Baltimore housewife, 
I would buy a set of iron doorsteps and use the 
white wooden ones for firewood. Or else I 
would attach a lawn sprinkler to the top step 
and fold my hands. Hoopla! 

We passed miles and miles of those decent, 
white-trimmed, very respectable brick houses 
on the way to Fort McHenry. The stuffy street 
car, bearing white and black passengers in more 
or less close proximity, left us at the Fort gate 
and went back to the city. I don't know what 
impulse started us on the mad pilgrimage, for 
historic battlegrounds and forts are never im- 
pressive. In fifty years, even Champagne will 
cease to afTect us as it should. We were the 
only tourists who had dared to venture into 
Fort McHenry that day, and we battled our 
way around the ramparts, slipping and sliding 

[29] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

lover the frost-encrusted grass, in the teeth of a 
bitter gale. Armistead, done in bronze, faces 
Patapsco Bay from the walls he defended so 
magnificently in 1814. And behind him, where 
Key saw the star-spangled banner fluttering 
travely on that famous dawn, a tattered flag, 
very stained and forlorn, whipped and rattled in 
the cold wind. We skirted the Fort and rushed 
back to the stuffy street car, very depressed. 

There are no baroque excrescences in Balti- 
more's architecture, and, except for the startling 
onion-towers of the Cathedral, the whole city 
seems to have made up its mind to be as con- 
strained as a modern emotional actress. The 
Cathedral is a wild combination of the classic 
and the Oriental, the only Catholic church I 
have ever been in that has not made me regret 
that I do not belong to the old faith. There was 
no mystery in its shadows, no sombre flickering 
of candles, no faint odour of incense. It seemed 
to us that Baltimore could never mean to Amer- 
ica what Rome means to Europe, for one would 
not make a pilgrimage to its Cathedral as one 
journeys to St. Peter's. We should expect ex- 
alted architecture in our cathedrals — lacy fan 
vaultings, frescoed choirs, windows that smoul- 
der like the fires of an ardent heart, rich chap- 
els, shadows, silence and beauty. For why 

[30] 



OF THE SOUTH 

should we dedicate anything to God that is not 
the best we have to give? 

The rest of Baltimore pays strict attention to 
beauty, and there is something in the city's phy- 
siognomy not unlike the studied elegance of 
Paris and Munich. Automobiles are parked 
in an orderly way and are sternly warned not to 
stand at street crossings; disfiguring telephone 
and lighting wires are buried underground, like 
family skeletons, and there are parks and neat 
grass plots everywhere. We splashed through 
street after street of fine old red brick houses 
with simple doorways and wide windows cur- 
tained with mathematical precision, veiled just 
so far and no further. We wondered how the 
exact position of the window curtains was de- 
termined — by popular vote, by a tacit under- 
standing as binding as a sworn pledge, or 
simply because of an inherited sense of the 
proprieties! Civic pride in Baltimore permits 
itself only one exuberance. Statues and monu- 
ments fill the landscape and clog the public 
squares — there are statues to the heroes of 1814, 
Civil War monuments, Columbus monuments, 
a delicate column in memory of those Mary- 
landers who fought during the Revolution, and 
an impressive shaft topped by a statue of Wash- 
ington. Was it my imagination, or does the 

[511 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

Washington monument smack of those Roman 
columns (there is one in the Piazza Colonna, I 
remember) which have been deprived of their 
pagan heroes and supplied with saints? Is it 
my imagination, or has Washington lost his 
martial air? He stretches out his hand as if he 
were bestowing a blessing on Baltimore, and he 
is so far away that he might be St. Peter or St. 
Paul. He only lacks a halo to fit into the Cath- 
olic atmosphere of the locality, a gigantic St. 
George facing the Cathedral. 

On either side of the monument there are 
neat, well-clipped little parks, Charles and Mon- 
ument Streets obligingly becoming Washing- 
ton Place and Mount Vernon Place in honour 
of the aloof hero, and decking themselves out 
with pleasant fountains and trees for several 
blocks. In Washington Place, not at all 
dwarfed by the great shaft but holding their 
own through sheer perfection, there are a half 
dozen bronzes by the French master Barye, 
coloured by rain and sun, snow and fog, with a 
beauty as rare as the opalescent magic of Cel- 
lini's Perseus. We stood in the rain and blessed 
it for treating bronze as it does, and blessed 
Baltimore for putting Barye's bronzes where 
the rain can get at them. 

Somehow the wicket gate of a museum, click- 
[32] 



OF THE SOUTH 

ing me into a shrine of art, deprives me of en- 
thusiasms; lam tired before I am fairly inside. 
I don't like to see intimate masterpieces hung 
in rows like dead fishermen's trophies. I don't 
care for statues placed side by side in cold, 
whitely illuminated halls, like bloodless corpses 
in a marble morgue. I want to see pictures in 
houses and statues in gardens and jewelry worn 
against the living flesh and books on library 
shelves. I would walk miles to see a half-for- 
gotten Madonna in a dim and dusty church or 
to hold a silver altar lamp in my hands while an 
untruthful sexton babbles its fabulous and whol- 
ly imaginary history. There is a Lorenzetto in a 
baptistery at Siena that is more precious to me 
than all the masterpieces in the Uffizi, simply be- 
cause I saw it by the light of a flickering wax 
taper one blue twilight a long time ago. The 
Baryes in Washington Place in Baltimore have 
just the same quiet w^ay of saying, "You don't 
have to look at us if you don't want to. You 
don't have to whisper in our presence. We are 
not in a gallery. Here we are, passerby, for 
your delectation." 

We were disappointed because we did not 
see any of Baltimore's famous beauties; I had 
wanted to make comparisons, and Allan — well, 
he was disappointed anyway. I couldn't find 

[33] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

out where Baltimore beauties stay when it rains, 
for certainly they do not risk their loveliness 
out of doors. Ever since Miss Betsy Patterson 
of Baltimore enraptured Jerome Bonaparte and 
married him, Maryland beauty is supposed to 
have been of the blighting, death-dealing va- 
riety. Virginia argues the claim because one of 
the royal Murats of Naples married a Virgin- 
ian and "lived happily ever after" in Talla- 
hassee. So that to-day skittish young men avoid 
Maryland and Virginia as they would the 
plague, remembering what happened to two 
princes a long time ago when young men were 
braver in love. 

The street crowds in Baltimore were like 
street crowds the world over, or at least, the 
Occidental world over! There were distinctive 
American differences — the men wore felt hats 
turned up in the back and down in the front, 
they carried their unlighted cigars fixed immov- 
ably in the corner of their mouths, and they 
hurried prodigiously. The women looked like 
New Yorkers, but I detected a slight variation 
in the angle of their hats. Not a damnable 
variation like the Swedish, which puts milli- 
nery atop hair-dressing as if a hat were a boat 
and a bang a wave (I have no double inten- 
tions), nor the English variation which places 

[34] 



OF THE SOUTH 

headgear on the shoulder blades. The Balti- 
more variation is a slight surrender to the mode. 
"Let me see from under my hat," says Lady 
Baltimore, and sees whether it is fashionable or 
not. New York's baleful influence in high 
white kid shoes, run over at the heel, had spread 
like the measles, and there were samples of that 
remarkable New York product, the "young 
thing," short-waisted and fragile, anaemic and 
bored, powdered beyond belief on the tip of 
the nose, gum-chewing, independent, and sophis- 
ticated. She had the balm, in Baltimore, of 
a slightly softer speech, although you must go 
further south to hear "gy-aden" for garden. 
The rest of the crowd was made up of negroes 
and sea-going men, the negroes all inconceiv- 
ably forlorn and tattered, the sea-going men 
wearing those blue jerseys, a little too short in 
the sleeves, and the visored caps which seem to 
be a part of their traditional makeup. The most 
respectable and self-respecting darkies lurked 
in the dining-rooms of the Rennert, where they 
murmured suggestions or swayed from the kit- 
chens to the serving tables bearing enormous 
trays on the pink palms of their hands. They 
seemed to enjoy the luxury of their surround- 
ings, their white waistcoats and the pleasant un- 
certainty of tips. 

[S5^ 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

We encountered the other variety of negro 
on the way to Annapolis, when a deputy sheriff 
boarded the electric car with two black prison- 
ers. Just before the car started, a police patrol 
brought the wretched fellows at a gallop; they 
were shoved, pushed, pulled and jostled through 
the crowd and put aboard the car with scant 
ceremony. Shackled to the sheriff's wrists, they 
rode nearly the whole way to Annapolis, spoil- 
ing the landscape, for me at least. They were 
pitiful and revolting, criminally insane, the 
sheriff said, and although they were big enough 
to have strangled their sandy-haired Irish cap- 
tor with one hand, they sat facing him in a 
wretched, dumb silence, their huge shackled 
hands hanging limply together. We had not 
crossed the Mason-Dixon line, but the dark 
Strain was already dominant in the discordant 
national symphony. As we went further south 
we were to hear it grow louder and louder, in 
a crescendo of intensity, reaching its climax at 
Savannah and dwindling again in Texas to 
minor melody. It seemed to us that the negroes 
were shabbiest in Baltimore and Charleston, 
that they were most likable in Norfolk, that 
they were most offensive at Savannah and most 
picturesque in New Orleans and St. Augustine. 
The upstart type has crept further and further 

[S6] 




Till': ONK- AND r\V()-ST()KJi:i) IIUL'SES AND COBBLED 

STREiyis ri:mindi:i) is of clovellv 



OF THE SOUTH 

into the South, to the great disadvanage of the 
self-respecting, infinitely better class that has 
not forgotten how to say "Yessah" and "Yes'm." 
A Virginian said to me, "We could not do with- 
out the darkies. They are better labour, for us 
who understand them, than Italians." And he 
added, "You Northerners don't know how to 
manage 'em. A nice combination of the au- 
thoritative and the paternal does the trick. But 
you have to be born to it." I do not pretend to 
know whether he was right, but I do know that 
the jaunty, overdressed, impudent and self-as- 
sertive negro cannot possibly be the result of a 
paternal authority. Some one is to blame, per- 
haps, who was not, to quote the Virginian, 
"born to it." 

For an hour the two ragged black wretches 
stared at the floor and let the bleak landscape 
race past without once turning their heads to 
glance at it. Patches of snow were still lying 
in the hollows, and spitting clouds raced close 
to the earth, almost touching the pointed tips 
of the black cypress pines. The approach to 
Annapolis, like Annapolis itself, is not spectac- 
ular. The electric car jangles into the town 
and puts you down at the door of the State 
House, or, more exactly, a short block away 
from it, with as little ostentation as possible. 

C 37 ] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

Annapolis was sound asleep when we were 
there. The Capitol dozed on its hilltop, the lit- 
tle rows of quaint and ramshackled houses 
snoozed gently, the enormous Academy build- 
ings snored outright in profound slumber. I 
don't know whether the town was indulging in 
a daily siesta or whether the entire population 
had gone to Baltimore for the afternoon, for 
Annapolis, like Washington, is a suburb of the 
Monument City! The only living things we 
encountered in our wanderings were the sentry 
at the Academy gates, a priest, two erect cadets 
and a nigger's hound! 

Annapolis is the oldest chartered city in 
America, a very small city indeed to stagger un- 
der such an honour. It is besides the capital of 
Maryland, and I was so sentimentally afifected 
by the precious soil under my feet that I 
hummed "Maryland, my Maryland" with great 
stress, for even nomads thrill to the feel of na- 
tive earth. I could remember the tune, but I 
confess to my everlasting shame that Randall's 
poetry was beyond me. 

The old town is splendidly picturesque. The 
one and two-storied houses and the cobbled 
streets, dipping steeply down to the water- 
front, reminded us of Clovelly, Clovelly of 
blessed Devonshire memory! For Annapolis is 

[38] 



OF THE SOUTH 

first and last an English town, a town of red 
brick and high garden walls, quaint corners, 
tidy shops and an air of great decorum and 
friendliness. Queen Anne and the Georges 
left a characteristic architecture, beautified by 
its colonial transplanting into something rare 
and distinguished. The Brice house shows 
what America, plus an English heritage, can do 
architecturally. If America would only go on 
doing it! 

The Naval Academy buildings are a sore 
disappointment, for you must pass the dignified 
and aquiline State House, where Washington 
surrendered his commission in 1783, and where 
the First Constitutional Convention was held 
three years later, on your way to the Academy 
close. The gaunt ugliness of the College build- 
ings is softened by wide-spreading lawns, 
clipped like a German pate, and by groups of 
magnificent trees. But it is perfectly apparent 
that since its foundation in 1845 the Naval 
Academy has been accumulating ponderous and 
hideous buildings, reaching a sort of hysterical 
climax in the new chapel, whic'h rises like a 
gilded and frosted sugar birthday cake over the 
body of John Paul Jones. If Jones could see his 
sepulchre he would beg pitifully to be taken 

[39] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

back to France and re-entombed in his obscure 
and well-nigh forgotten French grave. 

Down on the shore of the little Severn River, 
where we had wandered to recover from our 
architectural tirade, we encountered the negro 
hound. I don't mean that he was a black hound 
— far from it. He was, or had been before he 
rolled in acres of thick Maryland mud, as white 
as the driven snow. We knew he was a negro 
hound by the humble look in his eyes, the 
ashamed droop of his thick tail. He wouldn't 
come to us, although I whistled and crooned 
and begged. All the while Allan was drawing 
a cluster of small sailing boats and dories, I 
wooed the hound. He wagged, he rolled his 
eyes at me and lolled out his tongue in a wide 
grin, but he was as bashful as a pickaninny. He 
knew better than to take the caresses of a white 
hand; he knew I was mistaken; he apologised 
and tried to explain that he was poor and hum- 
ble, and that he had dedicated his love to an- 
other race. He struggled to tell me that he 
knew his place and that he had so far for- 
gotten his past that he had tried to change his 
colour by rolling in the mud; if he had achieved 
a mulatto complexion, he was not to blame. 
Would I excuse him? I would and did. I 
stopped my clucking and said, in a stern voice, 

[40] 




A CLUSTER OF SMALL SAILING BOATS AND DORIKS 



OF THE SOUTH 

smiling broadly, "You run right along home. 
D'you heah me, you good-fo'-nothing houn'?" 
And he leaped for joy and trotted away, enor- 
mously relieved. 

The oyster boats cluster like barnacles along 
the water-front, so close-packed that you can 
walk from one to the other for blocks without 
taking a single long step. They were the only 
craft we saw, although only a half a mile away 
our future admirals were learning the super-art 
of seamanship. A thick mist had obligingly fol- 
lowed us down from Baltimore and hung like 
a blanket over Annapolis, obscuring the bay en- 
tirely. So we climbed back into the town, pur- 
suing beautiful architecture as long as there 
was a vestige of the pale twilight left. The two 
erect cadets, laced into their jackets to the burst- 
ing point and very shy, as all real seamen are 
when they are ashore, directed us to the electric 
car's starting place. But we lost it again, since 
Annapolis streets take their own sweet way and 
ramble on as inconsequentially as Confederate 
veterans. We had to be set right, very appro- 
priately, by a benign priest who was pacing up 
and down a garden path on the other side of a 
low brick wall. Allan looked over the top and 
lifted his hat, breaking in on the evening's medi- 
tation with a subdued and gentle question. 

[11] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

"Straight ahead," was the priest's answer. 

So we turned humbly away, set at last on the 
right path, and determined, come what would, 
to keep going straight ahead. 



[42] 




CHAPTER III 

WHICH CONTAINS A TROLLY TRIP AND A 
LAUNDRY GRIEVANCE 

NLAND steamers are the pariahs of 
the ship world. They are neither 
fish, flesh nor fowl. River, lake and 
bay steamers, sound and harbour 
steamers, channel and canal steamers — they are 
all alike, with their excursion manner, their 
cramped deck space, their red carpets and velvet 
lounge chairs, their piles of folded and dingy 
camp stools, and, in America, their horribly 
sleepy coloured stewards in crumpled white 
coats. When the porter at the Rennert advised 
us to go on to Norfolk by water, we knew what 
we were being let in for. But we bought our 
tickets because we hoped that the fog would lift 
before morning and disclose the pageant of Nor- 
folk harbour and Hampton Roads. Vain hope! 
Smug and credulous N.authoress and Nillustra- 
torl We should not have expected miracles of 
a Chesapeake Bay fog! 
We permitted the positive porter to transfer 

[43] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

us from the hotel to the dock while we were 
still under the spell of his eloquence and before 
we could convince him, or each other, that it 
was bound to be a foggy night and that we might 
just as well wait another day. It was too late to 
turn back when the taxi drew up at the dock, for 
an army of stewards fell on our luggage (one 
for each suitcase and two for each trunk), and 
escorted us to our staterooms. Allan tipped six 
of them for service and eight more for moral 
assistance, and after reading the framed warn- 
ings to lock the door, to watch out for thieves, 
to look under the berth for life-preservers, and 
to turn out the light, we went on deck, pro- 
foundly depressed. 

The interior of an excursion steamer always 
reminds me of a varnished and upholstered 
columbarium. The restless passengers pop in 
and out of their tomb doors like lively ghosts 
or sit, first a passenger, then a nickel spittoon, in 
neat regularity, the entire length of the pro- 
digious corridors. The typical excursionist 
resists fresh air with an almost fanatical vio- 
lence; he stays in the red-velvet saloons, reading 
highly-coloured magazines and only venturing 
on deck for a hurried smoke. He is impervious 
to sunsets and dawns, to the beauty of passing 
ships and the mystery of the sea. 

[4.4] 



OF THE SOUTH 

The Norfolk steamer left Baltimore at dusk 
with the casual and leisurely farewell of a ferry- 
boat. The pallid passengers, already seasick, 
had taken to their staterooms or to their velvet 
lounges, the stew^ards had fallen permanently 
asleep, and Allan and I were alone on the wet, 
slippery stern deck where we could feel the 
violent shiverings of the screw as the steamer 
churned and backed out of the slip into the 
harbour. Baltimore glittered behind us in a 
subdued, well-bred way — discreet as always! 
Only one electric sign, shrieking Coca-Cola in 
letters six feet high, dripped and blinked in 
liquid sheets of light, and in the heart of the city 
a huge illuminated clock face explained that it 
was half-past six. 

The steamer edged into the wider channel and 
swung around, kicking up foam like a young- 
ster learning how to swim. Then we faced 
Patapsco Bay, Baltimore apparently shifting to 
the wrong side of the horizon with our turning 
and dropping rapidly behind like a conflagra- 
tion snufifed out by the sea. On both banks of 
the bay long strings of light rimmed the water's 
edge; factory chimneys flared in dramatic out- 
bursts against the gathering darkness of the sky. 
Tugs crossed our bow trailing fiery reflections, 
launches tossed in our wake a moment like 

[ 4..^ ] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

bobbing corks and then disappeared; schooners 
drifted by, incredibly remote and mysterious. 
And always, from the surface of the water, mist 
wreaths rose, twisted, tore loose and curled up- 
ward, drifting across the deck and powdering 
our cheeks and hair with iridescent sequins. 

''Dirty weather," I said in a professional tone. 

"Very thick," Allan agreed solemnly. 

We stood mournfully by the rail, the mist 
stinging our faces, and exchanged reminiscences 
of fogs at sea. This is a trick we have when we 
want to test each other's courage. Of course no 
one ever wins the game for it would not be 
cricket to exhibit frazzled nerves. And unless 
Allan should happen to read this book (which 
is wholly improbable), he will never know that 
I am desperately afraid of encountering fogs in 
narrow channels. 

The fog that enveloped us that night blotted 
out the world completely before we had left 
Patapsco Bay; in Chesapeake Bay it became a 
blanket, impenetrable, as tangible as a wall, as 
terrifying as an atrocious nightmare which wipes 
out sense and sensibility and leaves nothing but 
uncertainty and terror. But I turned my coat 
collar up around my ears, paraded back and 
forth across the tiny deck and pretended that I 
liked it. 

[46] 



OF THE SOUTH 

Inside, where the hermetically-sealed excur- 
sionists read Hearst literature and chewed gum, 
a musical sailor played syncopated melodies on 
the toneless piano; "Ragging the Scale" floated 
out to us, making strange discords with the 
lugubrious croakings of the foghorn. 

All night long the shivering blasts shook the 
steamer like an ague chill while we tossed in our 
narrow berths and put the hard pillows now 
under one cheek, now under the other in a futile 
struggle to sleep. Fainter, groaning horns al- 
ways answered, now to starboard, now to port, 
now dead ahead, like the melancholy wails of 
lost souls. I was alert and active all night, 
hopping out of bed to look into the impenetrable 
fog, seeing nothing but my own shadow drift- 
ing, grotesquely projected against the compact 
mist. Like the nervous motorist who drives an 
automobile from the back seat by concentrating 
unselfishly on the road, I navigated the tortuous 
channels of Chesapeake Bay by standing in the 
open window of my stateroom and giving my 
whole attention to the elusive foghorns. Like 
will-o'-the-wisps they skipped from side to side 
of the bay, tormenting pilots and upsetting 
steamer schedules. My watchfulness must have 
done some good, for towards morning a sleepy 
steward rapped at my door and said that we 

[47] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

were comin' into Ole Point Comfo't presently 
and that the gen'mun in numbah fo'ty-fo' wanted 
me to come out on deck. 

Apparently Allan still hoped for an eleventh- 
hour miracle and a glimpse of Hampton Roads 
and Norfolk Harbor at dawn. I locked my door 
and tiptoed down a snoring corridor, past stew- 
ards and stewardesses asleep in abandoned atti- 
tudes under the full glare of many electric 
lights, past the musical sailor stretched full 
length on a red velvet divan with his round cap 
over his face, past sleepy watchmen and yawn- 
ing deckhands. The rest of the passengers slept 
soundly in their columbarium roosts, sceptical 
or initiated or perhaps forewarned that the 
steamer would be late. I found Allan on the 
forward deck, gazing hopefully into a dripping 
wall of fog. 

''Did you sleep?" I asked. 

"Yes, like a top," he lied. 

And I echoed, trying to open my eyes wide 
and to look brisk, "So did I! Like a top!" 

The steamer and the fog were playing an ex- 
citing game of hide-and-seek. The fog laid 
traps, becoming at once opaque and impene- 
trable, parting suddenly to show us the stern 
lights of a schooner just ahead, then blotting out 
the vision forever. The steamer advanced cau- 

[48] 



OF THE SOUTH 

tiously, slowing down so that the revolutions 
of the screw ceased altogether and there was no 
sound but the slight hissing of the water along 
the sides, then leaping ahead again at top speed 
like a hunting dog that has picked up its quarry's 
scent. Bell buoys, light buoys, the pilot and 
Providence got us safely into Old Point Com- 
fort. 

We heard voices before the pier loomed out 
of the shadows at all. Then we saw electric 
lights, blurring round holes in the fog, and the 
steamer churned and splashed sideways toward 
them. As soon as she was made fast a swarm of 
negro stevedores rushed aboard, trundling bar- 
rows and trucks back and forth like toiling 
demon ghosts. 

Dawn overtook us there, a steel-blue dawn 
that only deepened the confusing mystery of the 
fog. Imperceptibly, the piles and shedding of 
the wharf appeared, we saw a motor car stand- 
ing apparently on the top of the water, long 
bands of light like prodigious antennae stabbing 
the darkness before it. And suddenly, as if an 
obscuring veil had been whisked away, we saw 
the famous towers of the Hotel Chamberlain, 
then the enormous fagade and a few scattered 
lights blotted and indistinct. 

Gibraltar wears a Prudential face for most 

[49] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

of us, and the Hotel Chamberlain — quick, what 
does it mean to you? A gay scene, of course — 
a foreground of warships, white duck officers 
and ladies with parasols, a background filled 
with the biggest hotel in the world! Advertis- 
ing has made the Chamberlain the most famous 
hotel in America — its picture is as familiar to 
us as Mennen's celebrated ugliness, Phoebe 
Snow and the bearded Smith Brothers. I was 
shocked to find that the Chamberlain, like Mark 
Twain's woolliest dog, wasn't so "dinged" big, 
after all! It is a large hotel, but years of adver- 
tising have created an imaginative colossus, a 
sort of wooden Louvre where gay ladies and im- 
maculate officers dance from morning to night. 
Negro stevedores where I had pictured admirals 
and generals! I felt that somehow I had been 
cheated. 

Nor was I the only one who expected gaiety 
and leisure. A coloured person of imagination 
was leaning against one of the trucks down on 
the wharf doing nothing very well. 

"Look heah," one of the labouring stevedores 
yelled at him, "why don't you get to work, you 
good-fo'-nothin' nigger?" 

The victim of Hotel Chamberlain advertis- 
ing methods leaned more cozily against the 
truck. "Ah ain' lookin' fo' work, boss," said he, 

[50] 




TMi: I F.RK\ SLIP AT NORIXH.K. 



OF THE SOUTH 

"s'long as Ah can find anything better to do." 
We crossed to Norfolk between a double row 
of anchored ships all pathetically anxious to 
make themselves seen and heard. If we had 
been conquering heroes we could not have been 
given a more vociferous greeting — horns, bells, 
wailing battleship sirens, and whistling buoys 
warned us to keep to the channel, the whole crew 
of a small schooner standing on deck to pound on 
kitchen utensils until we were out of sight. So, 
triumphantly, we came to Norfolk. 

Norfolk announces itself to the traveller by 
a huge sign advertising Anheuser-Busch, but 
Virginia has gone dry; Virginia, the land of 
mint juleps and convivial F. F. V. colonels, has 
gone bone dry! The head waiter at the Monti- 
cello informed us of the State's tragedy at break- 
fast, as if he were afraid that we might be in the 
New York habit of drinking cocktails at nine 
o'clock in the morning. The hotel dining- 
rooms are on the eighth floor, possibly to coun- 
teract the low spirits caused by this sudden 
abstinence. And, indeed, if anything could make 
one forget the lack of the stimulating toddy, 
the view from the Monticello windows ought to. 
Prohibition struck a hard blow at some of the 
Virginian hotels, and of course it put some very 
prosperous "pubs" out of business altogether, 

[51] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

but it Is a comforting fact that being alco- 
holically dry lias not hurt the State financially. 
The Monticello, which is the largest and most 
pretentious hotel in Norfolk, has balanced its 
deficit to a certain extent by charging ten cents 
an order for bread and butter. If it had done 
the same thing a year ago, the management 
would have netted something like fifteen thou- 
sand dollars on bread and butter alone. So there 
is a balm for every wound — even prohibition! 
I could not find out how the negroes feel about 
their loss. There used to be a bar in the col- 
oured quarter in Norfolk where fourteen bar- 
tenders, each with a cash register before him, 
served drinks to thirsty Ethiopians from dawn 
to dawn. The thirty-five thousand negroes of 
the quarter must have been as insatiable as the 
ladies of Whitechapel. Now they are reduced 
to their legal quart obtainable only once in so 
often, delivered by express and as sweet to their 
thirsty tongues as dew in the parching desert. 
In Norfolk they tell the story of the unfortunate 
darkey who went to the express oflice for his 
quart a week before Christmas. As he was com- 
ing out again with the precious bottle tucked 
under His arm, he slipped on the icy pavement, 
lost his footing and fell headlong, smashing his 

[52] 



OF THE SOUTH 

treasure into fragments. He sat up and con- 
templated the ruins. 

"Oh, Gawd," he said bitterly, "oh. Gawd, 
Christmas am done come and gone!" 

The negro quarter is in the centre of Norfolk, 
but it does not encroach upon the white district; 
black does not mix with white in the city, each 
tide of humanity flowing side by side like the 
waters of the Rhone and the Arve, unmingling 
and distinct. Nor do the negroes seem to over- 
flow even as pedestrians into the rest of the town ; 
they stay in their own few square blocks, attend 
their own theatres and stare in at our own shop 
windows. They are for the most part unskilled 
labourers and do not work together with white 
men. 

But even without a preponderance of African 
duskiness the streets of Norfolk are colourful 
enough. At night, when the festive strings of 
sputtering arc lamps and electric bulbs are 
lighted, making a brilliant arch over the 
shopping streets, Norfolk is amazingly gay. 
Sailors and marines from Portsmouth, soldiers 
from Fortress Monroe and aviators from New- 
port News give a martial touch to the street 
crowds that is not at all usual in a country where 
there is no universal passion for uniforms. We 
heard many English voices as we wandered up 

[53] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

and down Granby Street, for there is a brisk 
horse-transport between Norfolk, Newport 
News and Bristol and London which brings an 
increasing number of British ships to Virginia. 

Very little ammunition leaves the port for 
Europe, for which I should think the Virginians 
must be profoundly grateful. They have left 
that grave responsibility to New York because 
the Empire State is nearer the base of supplies. 
But it would have been a strange analogy if 
Virginia had sent shells for use against Eng- 
land's enemies in return for Lord Dunmore's 
cannon balls, fired in 1776 into the little city of 
Norfolk! 

One of the balls is hidden in the English brick 
walls of St. Paul's church, but I did not see it 
for I am trying to forget old rancours now that 
America and England have become flesh and 
blood allies in the great struggle for democracy. 
And Norfolk, except for the crumbling walls 
of old St. Stephen's, was entirely destroyed by 
Dunmore when he turned the frigate Liver- 
pool's guns on the rebel town and reduced 
everything except the inhabitants' courage to 
dust. Up to that time, Norfolk had been loyally 
English. It was established on fifty acres of 
ground bought from a certain Nicholas Wise, 
who must have been an inveterate smoker or 

[54] 



OF THE SOUTH 

else a shrewd judge of the future, for he ac- 
cepted ten thousand pounds of tobacco in ex- 
change for his land. And this was in 1680, be- 
fore the United States Tobacco Company 
dreamed of existing! Anglomania was still 
rampant in 1746, when the men of Norfolk car- 
ried an effigy of the Pretender, Charles Edward 
Stuart, through the streets of the town and then 
hanged and burned it. This was "strafing" with 
a vengeance, and it did not seem possible that 
even such an arbitrary measure as the detested 
Stamp Act could shift public opinion and set an 
American Hymn of Hate ringing 'round the 
world. 

Ever since the Revolution the Virginia Pen- 
insula has had its thumb in the war-pie. Great 
and decisive battles were fought over the his- 
toric ground during the War of 1812 and again 
during the Civil War. And to-day one passes 
from the monuments of the historic dead to the 
feverish activities of the patriotic living by 
simply crossing the Elizabeth River to the Ports- 
mouth Navy Yard in one direction, and Hamp- 
ton Roads to Fortress Monroe and the Curtiss 
Flying School in the other. For Nature 
planned a great destiny for Virginia when she 
arranged that Chesapeake Bay, Hampton Roads, 
the James and the York rivers and Norfolk 

[55] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

Harbor should be within a stone's throw of 
each other. Captain John Smith, who began to 
advertise Old Point Comfort in 1607, three hun- 
dred years before the publicity machinery of 
the Hotel Chamberlain was set in motion, wrote 
an ecstatic description of the peninsula. Smith 
was the Theodore Roosevelt of his day — an 
ardent explorer, an adventurous spirit, strenu- 
ous, enthusiastic and indefatigable. His account 
of the Virginian settlement sounds like Roose- 
velt turned right about face and transplanted 
into the seventeenth century. 

"There is but one entrance into this country, 
and that is at the mouth of a goodly bay eighteen 
or twenty miles broad. The cape on the south 
is called Cape Henry, in honour of our most 
noble Prince; the north cape is called Cape 
Charles, in honour of the worthy Duke of 
York. The isles before are called Smith 
Isles, by the name of the discoverer. Within 
is a country that may have the prerogatives 
over the most pleasant places known, for 
earth and heaven never agreed better to frame 
a place for man's habitation. The mildness of 
the air, the fertility of the soil, and the situation 
of the rivers are so propitious to the use of man, 
as no place is more convenient for pleasure, 
profit, and man's sustenance under any latitude 

[56] 




THK NA\V YARD GATE, P(JR 1 SMOT 1 11 



OF THE SOUTH 

or climate. So then, here is a place, a nurse for 
soldiers, a practice for mariners, a trade for 
merchants, a reward for the good, and that 
which is most of all, a business (most acceptable 
to God) to bring such poor infidels to the 
knowledge of God and His Holy Gospel." 

Like Roosevelt, who replied cryptically to 
those questioners of the River of Doubt, "It is 
still there," Captain Smith let posterity decide 
whether or not the Virginia Peninsula was worth 
discovering. He dubbed its furthermost tip Old 
Point Comfort, although the name is more ap- 
propriate now than it could have been in those 
early days of suffering and discouragement when 
America w^as in the larva state and none of the 
wretched settlers knew what would emerge from 
the chrysalis — a grub, a butterfly, or an eagle. 
It is decidedly a comforting and comfortable 
Old Point to-day, for the powerful batteries of 
Fortress Monroe and Fort Wool, "Rip Raps," 
face the entrance to Chesapeake Bay, giving a 
pleasant sense of security to the Virginians, 
while the sun parlours and medicinal baths and 
wide porches of the Chamberlain attend to the 
creature comforts of hordes of tourists. The 
Government does not put too much faith in the 
thick walls and batteries of the two forts on 
Smith's Point, perhaps because the fall of Liege 

[57] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

went a long way to prove that even the thickest 
walls crumble under modern guns. A new fort 
is being built at Cape Henry, on the opposite 
side of Chesapeake Bay, just where the first Eng- 
lish settlers landed in 1607. 

We had been so baffled by the fog on the morn- 
ing of our arrival at Norfolk that we went back 
to Old Point Comfort as soon as the sky had 
cleared and a pale winter sun had come out, 
crossing by ferry from Willoughby Spit. We 
walked around the high ramparts of Fortress 
Monroe, meeting with nothing more military 
than a lone bugler who was practising reveille 
and taps, very much ofif the key. We accosted 
him, as much to put a stop to the excruciating 
melody as to find out how to get out of the fort 
again, and as he walked with us across the 
pleasant enclosure, past barracks and officers' 
quarters to the main gate, he confided to us that 
a soldier's life is a dog's life and that he wanted 
to "get back to Jersey City." Apparently brass 
buttons and a brand-new bugle could not com- 
pensate for military restrictions. The confiding 
young bugler enjoyed life at Fortress Monroe 
as little perhaps as President Jefferson Davis did 
when he was confined there after the Civil War. 
The disillusioned president spent the year and 
a half of his imprisonment in Casement No. 2, 

[58] 



OF THE SOUTH 

which is nothing more or less than an under- 
ground cell in spite of a pretence at windows 
and a pillared entrance. But Jefferson's confine- 
ment was no more restricted than the Pope's, 
and like the Pope he had the balm of beautiful 
trees, the thick shade of clustering live oaks, 
well-clipped lawns, flowers and a view from the 
high walls of his prison across incomparable 
country. 

We were the proud possessors of a letter of 
introduction written by a very distinguished 
army officer to another very distinguished army 
officer who was stationed at Fortress Monroe, 
but we did not present it for fear that the whole 
military order of the day might be upset; two 
years in Germany had taught us a wholesome re- 
spect for gold braid. I remember sprinting 
through the English Gardens in Munich at top 
speed to get ahead of the swift-running Iser, for 
I had thrown the wrappings of a cake of Peters' 
Chocolate into the stream — and it was verboten. 
With the piece of chocolate in my hand and the 
wrapping paper sailing down the stream before 
me, the chain of damning evidence was com- 
plete. But what police officer could arrest a 
young lady with a piece of chocolate pursued 
by its wrappings? So I reasoned, and so I ran. 
Military rule had snatched hatpins out of my 

[59] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

unoffending hats. I had learned not to do this 
and not to do that, and to always step aside at 
the approach of a high-collared officer. In Ger- 
many one does instinctively what one is ex- 
pected to do, like a well-disciplined automat. I 
had learned by heart the terrible story of the 
Berliner who was drowned, although he was a 
champion swimmer, because he had accidentally 
fallen into a river where it was verboten to 
swim! The military atmosphere of Fortress 
Monroe set in motion my slumbering awe, and it 
was not until we had poked our inquisitive noses 
into every corner of the impressive pile that I 
realised that it was not "forbidden" to walk on 
the grass, to pick the flowers, to stare at the bat- 
teries, to photograph the moat, to lounge under 
the trees or to engage the sentry in conversation. 
Military rule in America means spick-and-span 
order, brisk obedience and good behaviour, but 
it goes on the principle that we are all well- 
behaved until we prove, by blowing up the fort 
and stepping on the flag, that we are not. No 
one base enough to betray such trust had ap- 
peared in the vicinity of Fortress Monroe when 
we were there, for a brave flag rattled crisply 
over the ramparts. The huge disappearing guns 
looked formidable enough to have shattered any 
enemy, but we gazed at them with dubious en- 

[60] 



OF THE SOUTH 

thusiasm, knowing that the inventors of verboien 
and hate were concentrating on still larger and 
more powerful guns. 

The towering Hotel Chamberlain would 
make an excellent target, and no camouflage in 
the world could disguise its pinnacles and sun 
parlours as a mountain or as an innocent forest 
of young trees. So it is written in the contract 
which permitted the building of so conspicuous 
a landmark within a stone's throw of a great fort, 
that in case a hostile fleet should approach the 
Virginia coast the Chamberlain must be de- 
stroyed. Then the fat ladies in rockers and the 
sweet young girls and the white-duck officers 
must vacate for a stern necessity, and there will 
vanish from our leading magazines a familiar, 
gay advertisement and the ravings of an inspired 
press agent. 

We did not stop to have lunch at the Cham- 
berlain, but boarded an electric trolley and rode 
decorously, in spite of warnings to "keep head 
and limbs inside of car," to Newport News. I 
can not understand why the Newport News 
Electric Railway Company should be so suspi- 
cious of the self-control of its passengers. As 
far as I know, it is not the usual thing anywhere 
in America to ride with one's limbs (the deli- 
cacy of it!) dangling from trolley car windows! 

[61] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

Our progress lay across historic ground, so 
that when I try to chronicle the advance of the 
electric car and the sequence of dates, I feel that 
it would be an easier matter to write the history 
of the United States, and be done with it. For 
we passed through Hampton, Kecoughtan of 
the seventeenth century, where John Smith and 
the hungry idealists who had ventured into the 
wilderness with him received hospitality at the 
hands of the "terrible savage." A son of the 
famous chief Powhatan was the host on that 
occasion. When one considers the matter in 
the light of a neutral mind, the Indians always 
were hospitable until the white men took ad- 
vantage of their simplicity; that, as the Irish- 
woman said, was how the fight began. When- 
ever I feel that I have caught the national habit 
and am screaming in imitation of an American 
eagle, when I feel that my spirit needs chasten- 
ing and my pride needs chastisement, I con- 
sider the American Indian. The story of his 
destruction is as terrible as the tragedy of Israel. 
Kecoughtan, the hospitable settlement on the 
banks of the Hampton River, was attacked by 
Lieutenant General Gates in 1610 to avenge the 
death of a colonist. Fourteen of the unsuspect- 
ing Indian inhabitants were killed, and Gates 
saw to it that the survivors abandoned their vil- 

[62] 



OF THE SOUTH 

lage. This was the punishment inflicted upon 
the very Indians who had saved the first English 
settlers from starvation only three years before! 
The law of compensation is sometimes en- 
forced, by destiny, by nature or by man. If 
Chief Pochins' people could have foreseen that 
a great Indian and Negro college would rise 
from the ashes of their wigwams, their bitter- 
ness might have been less poignant. The white 
man made restitution in 1868, two hundred and 
fifty years later, when General Samuel Arm- 
strong established Hampton Institute. We 
should have left the decorous trolley car to pay 
our respects to an institution that has given the 
hand of encouragement and practical aid to over 
a thousand Indians and to more than eight thou- 
sand negroes. We are ashamed of ourselves 
now for not stopping, since the gate was open 
and the mere passing through it would have 
been a simple pilgrimage compared to some that 
have been made to Hampton from the far ends 
of America and Africa by Indians and negroes, 
poor, uneducated and racially at a disadvantage, 
who have somehow heard that there is help for 
them there. But we caught only a glimpse of 
the Institute buildings, buildings which were 
built and "sung up" by the hands and the planta- 
tion voices of the students. We remembered the 

[63] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

Hampton Jubilee Singers, those short and tall, 
fat and lean, sombre and good-natured darkies 
who sang beautiful negro songs, camp meeting 
"revivals" and heart-touching plantation melo- 
dies in the summer hotels and boarding-houses 
of ten years ago. Their sweet singing built Vir- 
ginia Hall at Hampton Institute just as the songs 
they sang may some day build the characteristic 
music of America. 

The trolley car passed so many interesting 
things on the way to Newport News that while 
I had no desire to swing my feet out of the win- 
dow, I was tempted to hang my head out, like 
the Wolf in Little Red Riding Hood, "all the 
better to see with, my dear." The military at- 
mosphere still prevailed, Civil War veterans 
decorating each street corner and proving by 
their brisk bearing that you can be a very young 
fellow at seventy-five. Older people of twenty 
or forty or thereabouts passed, carrying strings 
of fish. Indeed the whole atmosphere of Hamp- 
ton and Phoebus is flavoured, commercially and 
atmospherically, with fish. The tourist who 
dines for pleasure and not simply for nourish- 
ment can satisfy his fastidious appetite anywhere 
along the peninsula with porgies and pompano, 
hogfish, mackerel and delicate butterfish, and if 
he likes oysters and is enough of a connoisseur 

[64] 



OF THE SOUTH 

to know the difference between "just an oyster" 
and a Virginia oyster, he will make loving pil- 
grimages from restaurant to restaurant to sample 
the delicious Lynnhaven, the succulent Mobjack 
Bay, the juicy York River and the tender James 
River, Nor does he have to consult his calendar 
before he begins his feasting to make sure that 
there is a letter "r" tucked away in the name of 
the month, for he can buy oysters fresh from the 
oyster beds, shucked at Hampton and as innocu- 
ous as morning dew. The crab factories along 
the water-front are going to be responsible in 
the dim future for some strange archaeological 
mistakes, since the mounds of discarded crab 
shells are rising higher and higher, veritable 
skeleton pyramids which will baffle the future 
professor into making the absurd statement that 
the Virginians of the twentieth century lived en- 
tirely upon the meat of crabs and built their 
cities atop the refuse of their feasts. 

The puritanical trolley turned aside at Hamp- 
ton and followed the line of the shore all the way 
to Newport News, passing rows and rows of 
suburban cottages built on a geometric plan that 
makes the neighbourhood about as picturesque 
and appealing as a concentration camp. We 
turned away from the hideous procession of art 
nouveau villas and looked out at the smiting blue 

[65] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

of Hampton Roads, as calm and unruffled as if 
the Monitor and Merrimac had never blazed 
away at each other and settled the destiny of a 
nation on its placid surface. The two prehis- 
toric ironclads met just off Sewall's Point and 
pursued each other like spitting dragons from 
their starting place to Old Point Comfort, and 
then battled furiously all the way back to New- 
port News again, crowds of people following 
them along the shore, like English rowing en- 
thusiasts pursuing two racing shells along the 
banks of the Thames. And at the end, although 
the Merrimac was perhaps technically victori- 
ous, the fight was a draw. The Monitor won a 
moral victory for the Union, and the evacuation 
of Norfolk before McClellan's advancing army 
soon followed. 

At Newport News we tried to break into the 
Newport News Shipbuilding Company's pre- 
cincts, finding open hostility and undisguised 
distrust at the gates. It was Saturday afternoon 
and the workmen had left the yards, but we ex- 
plained to the gentleman who acted as sentry for 
the company that we wanted to "wander about 
and watch the sun go down." If we had said 
that we wanted to place a ton of high explosives 
under the enormous hull of the nearly com- 
pleted Mississippi, he could not have been 



OF THE SOUTH 

more sceptical of our intentions. We had to 
produce letters from our publisher and the dis- 
tinguished army officer's introduction, fortu- 
nately preserved for just such an emergency, be- 
fore he would let us in. And he explained, 
rather peevishly, that he was ''tired anyway," 
for the men had been paid off that day, and one 
hundred thousand dollars had passed from the 
money-till of the Newport News Shipbuilding 
Company into the pockets of its seven thousand 
employes between noon and a quarter to one 
o'clock. 

"I take it on my own shoulders," the weary 
person said as he opened the office door and 
waved us toward the yard, "to let you look at the 
ounset from these premises. You have strange 
tastes. If you do any harm, I shall blow out 
my brains." 

"We wore him down," I said triumphantly, 
as we hurried away. 

"Wore him down!" Allan shouted. "Nothing 
of the sort. He was worn down already." 

But I insisted that we had won a triumph over 
authority, for the great yards were deserted and 
the prodigious hull of the U. S. S. Mississippi, 
scarlet and magnificent, towered directly over 
our heads. We had paused to read Hunting- 

[67] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

ton's pledge, written on a bronze tablet at the 
yard entrance: 

"We shall build good ships 
At a profit if we can 
At a loss if we must 
But always good ships." 

And the Mississippi seems to have been as 
good as his word, for when she was launched a 
month later she was a sight to warm the cockles 
of any shipbuilder's heart. The sun set oblig- 
ingly just behind her, and we lingered through 
a long twilight in the deserted yards where the 
clatter and roar of machinery had given way to 
a profound silence, where only our small voices 
echoed faintly, where the swarming labourers' 
tools had been laid down, as if forever, where 
the great unfinished ships were caught in a mesh 
of steel girders and wooden beams, where the 
furnaces and forges glowed dimly and the high 
roofs of the machine shops were filling slowly 
with shadows, where there was a mysterious 
cessation of violent activity, a hush, as if the 
building of the world had been delayed and the 
builders had been called away to some tranquil- 
lity, some peace, some rest from the gigantic 
labour, following the sun down the other side of 
the globe. 

[68] 



OF THE SOUTH 

We returned to Norfolk in a swift packet, 
crossing the wide stretch of tranquil water 
through a splendid flood of moonlight that filled 
the bowl of the world with quicksilver. We 
were alone on deck except for a mysterious and 
romantic young woman who looked like an F. 
F. V. and was dressed in rags. Bareheaded, she 
stood by the rail, looking into the face of the 
white moon, and she was so pathetically lovely 
and forlorn that Allan grew preoccupied and 
sighed like a furnace. I thought of offering her 
my extra coat, but the impulse died when I saw 
the haughty tilt of her fine head. One would 
as soon have thought of offering an undershirt 
to the Queen of England. We pitied her, Allan 
for her tattered beauty, I for her proximity to 
pneumonia, all the way back to Norfolk. 

When we got to the Monticello we went to 
our rooms to wash away the disturbing memory. 
My laundry, which I had entrusted to the hotel 
with entreaties written on the list to "return 
positively Saturday night" had kept its promise 
and was lying on my bed, done up in paper 
wrappings and packed in a box as if it were 
priceless raiment laundered by a modern Sans- 
Gene. 

"Hello!" I called into the next room to Allan. 
[69] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

"Here's the laundry. We can go on to Wilming- 
ton to-morrow, if you say." 

"Hurrah!" Allan sang, appearing in the door 
with his hair standing on end and most of his 
face buried in a towel. "Now I can have a clean 
shirt. I'll dress for dinner." 

I opened the box, and there in mounds of pink 
tissue I saw what had been my linen and Allan's, 
mutilated, transformed, stiffened beyond sem- 
blance to any earthly thing, blue as a cloudless 
sky, degraded. The ribbons had become ropes, 
the lace had taken on the horrible quality of 
chenille curtains, the buttons were flattened into 
oblivion. They cracked as I lifted them out — 
shirtwaists, petticoats, silk shirts, stockings — 

"All ruined!" I wailed, suddenly falling in a 
heap on the bed; "all ruined, and I have so — 
little!" 

Allan put his hand on my shoulder and patted 
sympathetically. 

"I'll buy more." 

"You can't. They're ruined. They've been 
run under a steam roller." I tossed a shower 
of pink tissue wrappings up in the air. "Tissue 
paper — string — pins — and four pounds of starch 
— I could kill somebody!" 

Allan raised his eyes and I saw a memory in 
[70] 



OF THE SOUTH 

them. '^Suppose you were in rags," he began. 
"Suppose — " 

But I had jumped up and was already pow- 
dering my nose. "Fleaven save us," I gasped 
through my tears; "vv^ho's complaining?" 



[711 



CHAPTER IV 

ON TO WILMINGTON, A WRECK, AND A LITTLE 
DISSERTATION ON PULLMAN CARS 




E had breakfast at half-past six with the 
mistaken intention of being on time 
for an eight o'clock train to Wilming- 
ton. From the dining-room windows 
of the Monticello, while a sleepy waiter served 
us coffee 'n rolls, we saw the moon set and the sun 
rise over Norfolk Harbor. It was all very 
beautiful and rather an adventure for me for I 
almost never see a sunrise. 

Allan had carefully paid the bill while I was 
dressing, so there was no excuse to unburden my 
laundry grievance to the night-clerk. Besides, 
there was small hope of redress, as I was wear- 
ing one of the shirtwaists. I had carefully con- 
cealed it under my coat, but its appalling starchi- 
ness gave me a pouter pigeon expression. Every 
time I moved my degraded and transformed 
lingerie cracked like a pistol shot. So I left the 
Monticello with black looks, forgetting how 
much I had liked the coffee, the orchestra and 
my comfortable bed. 

[72] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

We were ferried over to our train in a barge 
drawn, or rather nosed ahead, by a tug. The 
mysterious lady who had puzzled us so the night 
before crossed with us. She was still bare- 
headed and wore the thinnest sort of a meagre 
black jacket which was too long in the waist 
and too short in the sleeves. And this time she 
carried a book and a travelling bag, although 
what on earth she could have put in it baffled me 
utterly. She sat very quietly while we admired 
the tilt of her fine head and her really beauti- 
ful profile. She seemed to be perfectly indififer- 
ent to the stares of the men and the curiosity of 
the women as if it were the usual thing for young 
beauties with white hands and threadbare 
clothes to go about alone, hatless, and stagger- 
ing under a heavy travelling bag. 

"She is either a fanatic, a criminal or an 
actress," Allan decided after a long stare. 

But I thought secretly that she was more prob- 
ably a young person with "ideas," one of those 
heroic Joans of modern society who believe in 
turning the conventions inside out. I knew that 
if I should ask her why she affected a flutter of 
rags at the elbows she would answer quietly, 
"Because I am a free spirit," or some utter rot 
like that. We can be as eccentric as we like as 
long as our eccentricity is invisible. It is not 

[73] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

generally understood that the invisible kind of 
eccentricity is dangerous. No one would think 
of staring at a sober, unobtrusive passerby whose 
brain, nicely hidden from public scrutiny, is 
plotting the overthrow of a government or the 
assassination of a king. But let us go harmlessly 
barefoot, or take a naive fancy to walking 
backward, and we become objects of suspicion 
and aversion. The mysterious lady, I felt cer- 
tain, was neither a criminal, a fanatic or an 
actress, and she was probably reading "Elsie 
Dinsmore." 

It was still very early when the ferry drew 
away from Norfolk and, poked by the energetic 
little tug, edged across the harbour to the wharf 
where our train was waiting for us. The light 
was crisp and brilliant; it gilded the breasts and 
wings of wheeling gulls that followed us, and 
turned our wake into a churning froth of gold. 
We crossed the bow of a big, grey naval collier 
coming down from the Yard at Portsmouth on 
her way to sea. I don't suppose she is the tallest 
ship in the world, but she towered over us like 
a thin-sliced skyscraper, the sun glinting along 
her sides and rimming the sails and spars with a 
fiery glitter. How beautiful everything was! 
Fresh, boisterous, golden morning, the sparkle 
of the sea and the heady swell of it! Looking 

[74] 







IT WAS STILL \LRV KARLV WTIKN THE FERKV DREW 
AWAY FROM NORFOLK 



OF THE SOUTH 

back, we had a last glimpse of Norfolk and the 
familiar Anheuser-Busch sign which must be 
such a source of misery and bitter suggestion to 
the wet voters of Virginia. 

The mysterious lady and her travelling bag 
followed us into our Pullman and aroused the 
porter to a frenzy of curiosity by looking like 
a waif and behaving like a languid princess. 
She read and yawned delicately and read again, 
with her tattered shoes displayed on a cushion, 
and the porter was so stunned that he offered 
her a paper bag for the hat that she didn't have. 
I thought of bribing him to find out what she 
was reading, but I was so afraid that it might 
be Schopenhauer and not "Elsie Dinsmore" that 
I hesitated too long. 

At a small way-station not far from Norfolk 
she got off, and walked straight into the arms 
of a good-looking boy who was waiting for her 
on the station platform. He was dressed for all 
the world like a 

*'Ah do declare!" chortled the porter, who 
had pressed his nose flatter than ever against the 
window-pane. "Foh de Lo'd's sake!" 

"Movies!" I said. 

"Ah do declare," snickered the porter, "he's 
done dress' up like a cowboy. Jes' foh all de 
world like one, yessah. Foh de Lo'd's sake!" 

[75] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

"Movies," said Allan disgustedly. 

Perhaps. But I would rather believe that 
she had travelled the world over, hatless, to kiss 
him in the shadow of his sombrero, for it was 
big enough for two. 

After that we edged around the Dismal 
Swamp for miles. The trees are gaunt and bone- 
grey as skeletons, but they spread tenaciously at 
the roots, like giants with their feet spread wide 
apart, and get a foothold in the shallow water. 
I had expected to see Spanish moss swinging 
like witches' hair from the branches, but 
there was none. Festooned and looping vines 
hung in tangled confusion, and the dropsical 
trunks of the pallid trees were grotesque and 
melancholy, but it was not the lush and tropic 
forest I had pictured. I could not believe that 
the Virginia soil was productive, or conceive of 
the inhabitants being anything but web-footed, 
if all the rest of the State was like this — an end- 
less chain of puddles and tangled swamps laced 
with vines and clogged with bush growth. 

But there are fourteen millionaire farmers in 
Norfolk County, Virginia, and farmers can't 
become millionaires without farms. (Unless 
they go into munitions — but that, of course, is 
outside my contention !) The eight o'clock train 
to Wilmington must make a point of avoiding 

[76] 



OF THE SOUTH 

the fertile miles of Norfolk County's famous 
truck-farms. Simply because Tom Moore and 
Longfellow wrote ballads about the Dismal 
Swamp, tourists are supposed to hanker for a 
glimpse of its ashen desolation. I, for one, 
would have preferred to see the checkerboard 
landscape where the fruits and vegetables we 
buy in New York at the early morning market 
are picked "the day before." 

The Virginia farmer has every facility for 
selling his crops; he has an elaborate network of 
railways at his disposal and a great port at his 
very front door. North, South, East and West 
are open to him and his is the most spectacular 
market-place in the world. The next time I go 
to market (I don't go now, for I am raising my 
own vegetables in the tennis-court) , I shall re- 
member the sunny beauty of a Virginian day 
and perhaps marketing will take on romance 
from the memory. Who knows, if I am lucky 
I may buy one of Upton's potatoes! Upton is 
the Virginian potato king. He supplies the local 
farmers with fertiliser and seed; he sells the 
crop and divides the profit. It has been darkly 
but perhaps not truthfully hinted that by stor- 
ing the potatoes in his warehouses at Norfolk 
he has "cornered" the local potato market. At 
any rate, potatoes are making him rich, and I 

[77] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

could not help feeling chagrined that the value 
of a potato is higher than the value of a word! 
Another Norfolk man, Mr. Thomas Rowland, 
turned back the rich Virginia soil and discov- 
ered an agricultural gold nugget in the humble 
peanut. He staked out the first claims a long 
time ago when peanuts were popularly despised 
as nigger-food. Although the African slaves 
had for years planted their own peanut fields, 
no one except Mr. Rowland realised that there 
was any commercial value in the little "hard- 
shelled potatoes." Mr. Rowland was a man 
with a vision, and like most visionaries he was 
misunderstood. He believed in peanuts and 
eventually became the little father of the indus- 
try. I wonder whether he dreamed of peanut 
brittle and peanut butter and a thousand and 
one other peanut delicacies? I wonder whether 
he foresaw the amazing popularity of the corner 
peanut stand and heard the chirruping steam 
whistle, the thin, persistent note which has come 
to mean "hot-roasted peanuts" all over the 
world? If you are sentimental about such 
things, doff your hat to Mr. Rowland ! I did not 
know until I was decidedly grown up that pea- 
nuts grow under ground, and it was still more 
surprising to discover that the vines are cut and 
stacked around poles for all the world like 

[78] 



OF THE SOUTH 

miniature copies of those Austrian hay-mounds 
one sees in Karnten and sometimes in the Tyrol. 

The train to Wihnington ambled along like a 
Virginia creeper as far as Eura and there it 
came to a dead stop for an hour. The porter 
and the conductor disappeared, and save for one 
other traveller, who was mercifully sound 
asleep, we were left alone in the Pullman. A 
drowsy, stupefying calm settled down on us. We 
read our newspapers because there was nothing 
to see at Eura except the station hogs, and they 
had so little regard for their own lives, or so 
great a faith in our permanence, that they runted 
under the car wheels. At first we were sustained 
by the thought that we were waiting on a switch 
for some thundering express train to pass on its 
way to Norfolk. When that hope died, I began 
to wonder whether we hadn't perhaps been 
''slipped." I remembered the horrible occasion 
in England when I had fancied that I was going 
from Liverpool to London and had had the poor 
luck to be in the Warwick car. The express 
had roared on and the "slipped" car, unhooked 
in the great steel comet's full flight, had clicked 
into the Warwick station all on its own. 

"Warwick, madam." 

And a leisurely person opened the compart- 
ment door and took my bags. 

[79] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

"But I'm on the London Express!" 

"I beg your pardon, madam. This is the slip 
carriage for Warwick." 

On the platform I stared wildly about for the 
rest of the train. A puff of smoke on the horizon 
showed me where it was. 

"Slip carriage — " I began feebly. 

"Yes, madam." 

"It was, what d'you say, slipped on purpose?" 

The leisurely person had looked at me with a 
faint suspicion of pity. 

"Oh, you were going to London?" He al- 
lowed himself to smile. "It's 'ard, it is that, for 
foreigners to find their way ab'at. If you spoke 
English now — it wouldn't 'ave happened." 

He picked up the last aitch with care and 
turned his back on me. . . . 

"Have we been slipped?" I asked Allan, when 
Eura had become a fixture. 

The other passenger, who turned out later to 
be a lumber merchant from Norfolk, woke out 
of an uncomfortable and crumpled slumber and 
glanced at his watch. 

"It must be a wreck," he said. "There usually 
is one." 

"Usually!" 

"Well, nearly always. I'll go out and see." 

He had a nice smile and endeared himself to 

[80] 



OF THE SOUTH 

us at once by using it. "You just watch that 
razor-back hog stroppin' himself on the fence 
until I come back," he said. 

We waited, while the hog stropped. And sure 
enough, it was a wreck. 

"I hope you brought your lunch," our fellow- 
traveller said, appearmg in the doorway again 
with his engaging smile in action, "for we are 
going to be six hours late. There are eight 
freight cars off the track, all smashed to a tinder, 
up yonder a mile or so. I don't reckon we'll 
move on for some time. Would you like to walk 
ahead and see the wreck?" 

Apparently no one could tell us anything more 
definite. The conductor, whom every one called 
Captain Clarke or, popularly, "Cap," was sitting 
on the station steps with his thumbs hooked 
under his suspenders, his hat on the back of his 
head and a cheery smile for every one. The 
engineer was taking a nap on the cow-catcher, 
the engine puffed slowly with a thin whistle, 
like a snoring old man, and the Pullman porter 
was flirting with some very dark ladies in the 
Jim-Crow car. So we started on foot to see the 
wreck. 

All the inhabitants of Eura, white and black, 
had decided to do the same thing and the rail- 
road track looked like a promenade. There 

[81] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

were tall, lanky tar-heels in snuff-coloured 
jackets and mud-caked shoes, spitting and chew- 
ing rhythmically; there were inconceivably 
ragged negroes, tiny, barefooted pickaninnies 
with rolling eyes and infectious grins, black 
women with babies in their arms striding along 
the tracks with the curiously free gait of the 
African; there were farmers, hunters, and some 
solemn white boys in city shoes who had ap- 
parently come from Norfolk on our train, and, 
bringing up the rear, Allan, the lumber mer- 
chant and I. We all trudged toward a puff of 
white smoke a mile and a half away. The air 
was delicious, full of a delicate, heady pine 
smell, resinous and fresh, and the sun was so 
warm where it struck across my shoulders that 
I had to take off my fur and finally my coat. 
On both sides of the track a forest of short-leaf 
pine fringed the top of a low embankment. We 
were still on the skirts of the Dismal Swamp, a 
sandy oasis in the endless stretches of water- 
soaked land between Norfolk and Savannah. 

For the first time I saw cotton growing. 
"Only a po' little bunch," our Pullman acquaint- 
ance apologised. But he groped through a wire 
fence and picked a stalk of the pretty, snowy 
stuff for me to wear as a bouquet. It was 
thrilling to see a whole field of cotton, even if 

[82] 



OF THE SOUTH 

it was a po' little bunch. It was just as moving 
to come on a field of cotton as it was to come face 
to face with the Coliseum for the first time. 
Cotton means the South, the romantic and allur- 
ing South, just as the Coliseum means old Rome 
and bloody gladiators and rows of virgins with 
their thumbs turned down. It was just as mov- 
ing to hold a stalk of cotton, dazzling white, be- 
tween my fingers as it was to find an asphodel in 
the Campagna. And I shall be sorry if the time 
ever comes when there is nothing I will not have 
seen that can make me feel that way! 

A broken shoe on the driving wheel, what- 
ever that is, had caused the accident, and as the 
engineer said, it was some smash! He was 
sitting on the bank near the track, looking shaken 
and pale and contemplating the wreckage with 
an almost malicious pleasure. He had been in 
a wreck, he had saved his skin, and, believe him, 
it was some smash. 

"God was kind to the live stock," he said 
morosely. 

And God had been kind. The engine had 
ploughed up three hundred feet of track into a 
maize of twisted rail and tinder-wood, but it 
still stood upright, sunken to its knees in sand 
and wreckage. Right behind it there was a box- 
car full of live-stock, miraculously right-side up, 

[83] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

too. Behind that the eight smashed cars lay 
sideways, tipped on end, spilled into the ditch, 
split open, cracked, splintered and pulverised. 

"If you don't call that Providence," the en- 
gineer demanded, "what on earth do you call 
it?" 

We went up close to peer between the slats at 
the huddled cows, the grunting pigs, the 
stricken, shivering little calves, and tried to 
reach their soft, moist noses with handfuls of 
grass. I began to wonder why they had been 
saved at all since they were on their way to 
Norfolk to be slaughtered. There is a story, 
you remember, about a man who was being 
rushed to the hospital — rushed so fast, in fact, 
that the ambulance collided with a fire en- 
gine. . . . 

Providence had been generous. No one was 
hurt from the engineer and fireman to the small- 
est, terrified pink and black pig. But the solemn 
crowds that stood along the track contemplating 
the spectacular cataclysm would have had a 
much better time if some one had been obliging 
enough to break his head. Even mildly exciting 
human wreckage, a smashed leg or an arm, 
would have cheered them up. It was too blood- 
less. Otherwise it was a fine wreck. Vaguely 
disappointed, armies of small boys pressed 

[84] 



OF THE SOUTH 

around the engineer and probed for particu- 
lars. 

"Wa'nt you scairt?" 

"Didn't it bump awful?" 

"Did you git time to put on the brakes?" 

The engineer glowered at them. "I told you," 
he said, "it was a smash. I didn't know nothin', 
I just jumped." 

One small boy, freckled beyond recognition, 
bare-footed and wild-eyed, had more imagina- 
tion than any of us. He offered a sop to our 
thirst for horrors. 

"I guess," he said slowly, "I guess there's 
plenty of dead men under them cars — all 
smashed to pieces, I guess." 

We left the crowd still staring and trudged 
back the long, hot mile and a half to Eura again. 
Captain Clarke was sitting where we had left 
him on the station steps, but he had a dinner- 
plate on his knees, and oh. Lord, how good his 
dinner looked! He waved a fork at us. 

"You'd better go over yonder and have din- 
ner — that farmhouse behind the picket fence, 
just where you see the white hog. They'll give 
you something, I reckon. We're waiting for 
the wrecking train. I'll call you when they let 
us by. Scat now!" 

[85] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

"Can you give us dinner?" we asked at the 
farmhouse. 

And heaven be praised they reckoned they 
could. We were shown into the parlour to wait 
until something was "warmed up" for us. It 
was a parlour out of a story book, and we sat 
in silence trying to control our expressions. We 
had not believed that such parlours existed be- 
low the Mason-Dixon line. There were rows 
of pink conch shells on the mantel shelf. There 
was an organ. And a framed "What is Home 
Without Mother." Yes, really! And crayon 
portraits of grandfather and grandmother, 
grandfather whiskered and grandmother terri- 
fied. While we waited a young man with red 
hair and protruding teeth came in to entertain 
us. He hoped we were all well and remarked 
that the mud was unusually bad, even for that 
time of year. And I noticed, mentally putting 
my hand over grandfather's whiskers, that in 
twenty years the red-headed lisper would look 
exactly like the crayon portrait. A dejected 
white hound with a ponderous and very plebeian 
tail sat in the middle of the floor and whacked 
in a politely bored manner while we discussed 
the unseasonable mud. 

Dinner was served in a long shed behind the 
house, and you are not obliged to believe me 

[86] 



OF THE SOUTH 

when I tell you what we had to eat, although it 
is the gospel truth. We had smothered chicken, 
roast beef and corned beef, fresh pork and 
corned pork; we had turnip salad and hot, 
mashed turnip; we had potatoes and biscuits, 
soused hog's head, cheese, corn-bread, spoon- 
bread, pickled peaches, beef stew, preserved 
fruit, pound cake and chowchow, tea, coflfee 
and milk, beans and bacon. We began in the 
middle and ate outward. In my eagerness and 
confusion I put peaches and hog's head on the 
same plate and sugared my spoon-bread. The 
chicken was cold and jellied; in time I aban- 
doned the hog's head to sample it, and was then 
so intrigued by the corned pork that I left every- 
thing, even a small beginning in beef stew, for 
pork and more pork. 

"Oh, Lord," I said devoutly, putting down my 
knife and fork long enough to utter thanks, 
"give me time to finish!" 

But a lanky and terrifically whiskered indi- 
vidual sent at top speed by Cap' Clarke arrived 
in a breathless condition to warn us that the 
wreckers had come and that our train was going 
to "move on up" to the wreck. 

Allan rose with a groan, and somewhat im- 
peded by a mouthful of soused hog's head, asked 
"How much?" of our hostess. 

[87] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

For such a Rabelaisian feast we rather ex- 
pected to pay dearly. But our prodigal hostess 
dropped her eyes and explained that fifty cents 
was what she usually got. We didn't wait to 
discover whether she considered us usual or un- 
usual guests, but paid her and ran through the 
ankle-deep mud to our train. 

Captain Clarke, with his watch in his hand 
and one foot on the cow-catcher in an attitude 
reminiscent of Du Maurier's "Trilby," waited 
until we had swung aboard (very figuratively 
speaking), and then, with dramatic wiggle-wag- 
gles, signalled to the engineer to "move on up" 
to the wreck. 

With our engine's nose touching the wrecked 
engine's nose so that they looked for all the 
world like a pair of friendly dogs, we came to a 
final halt and were transferred — on foot, of 
course — to another train which had been sent 
up from Rockymount for us. Small, wobbly 
bridges were laid across the most impassable 
parts of the journey, and train hands were sta- 
tioned every few yards to see that the exhausted 
passengers reached the emergency train. And 
by this time it was hot, hot! Allan and the per- 
spiring porter staggered under two of our suit- 
cases; I manoeuvred the third. First I bore it 
with my left hand; then I set it down, wiped 

[88] 



OF THE SOUTH 

my brow, and picked it up -again with my right 
hand. Then I stumbled forward, struggling to 
lift the beastly thing with both hands. And 
finally when strength had ebbed, I put it on the 
ground and rolled it before me like a stevedore 
rolling a barrel. The wrecked train was at least 
a mile long; it curled like a snake around an 
almost Imperceptible bend in the tracks which 
the porter assured us was the most dangerous 
curve between Norfolk and Wilmington. 

"We gets wrecked just heah right along," he 
said. 

And when pressed for details, he added non- 
chalantly, "Oh, most every week," which did not 
tend to cheer us. 

Judging from what I saw of the negroes in the 
South, they move about like the nomad tribes of 
Egypt. I cannot imagine how they are able to 
afford the dubious luxury of Southern travel, 
for the distances are enormous, and in spite of 
mileage books, which are supposed to reduce the 
expense of long journeys, the three-cent miles 
are ticked off at an alarming speed. When we 
were planning our trip we spoke of "running 
over to Tampa from Jacksonville," or, blithely, 
of "stopping of¥ at Georgetown for a few hours 
on our way from Wilmington to Charleston." 
But a day-time journey between any of the 

[89] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

Southern seaports is an all-day journey, and at 
the end of our tour we found that we had spent 
exactly twelve days in Pullman cars and a week 
at sea! Connections were dubious, trains were 
late, and time and time again we found it im- 
possible to buy parlour-car reservations before 
actually boarding our train, when we had to wait 
anxiously until the porter had satisfied himself 
that there were, or were not, two vacancies. All 
of the express trains came from the North, 
''booked through" to the resorts of Southern 
Florida, and we usually made our entrance into 
a Pullman already crowded with Northern 
tourists who had settled themselves, in any chair 
at all, to play cards, to sleep or to knit. Our ar- 
rival always created a feeling of aversion, more 
or less openly expressed. We felt like social 
outcasts while the spirited and determined 
home-towners were being removed, card tables, 
knitting, fruit baskets, newspapers and all, from 
chairs not legally their own and deposited in 
others to make way for us. When a Pullman 
"sleeper" is made up for the day there is no room 
for luggage; there are no racks to accommodate 
it, and it is next to impossible to squeeze a suit- 
case under the heavily-cushioned chairs. The 
system makes one long for the European com- 
partment car which is provided with a corridor 

[90] 



OF THE SOUTH 

where cramped and weary passengers can stretch 
themselves, and even indulge in a brisk little 
promenade without having to reel up and down 
an aisle which is cluttered with travelling bags, 
fat cushions and an intricate confusion of human 
legs and feet. I would rather sit up all night 
than undress behind the revealing curtains of a 
lower berth, not to speak of attempting the acro- 
batic contortions necessary to an upper-berth 
disrobing! Is anything saved by the system ex- 
cept perhaps a surrender to the aesthetic needs 
of travellers? There is nothing more humiliat- 
ing than trying to manage hooks and eyes when 
you are wrapped in a green curtain and tangled 
in sheets and pillow cases. There is nothing 
more damnable than washing and combing be- 
fore a mirror which is coveted by twenty-five 
other women. Why isn't the compartment night- 
coach possible in America? We boast of the 
speed, efficiency, dustlessness and safety of our 
railroads, but travelling at night in the United 
States is made a degrading and tortuous ex- 
perience. 

The special train which had come from 
Rockymount had no Pullman at all. The ne- 
groes were herded into one car. We were 
herded into another to languish in the fetid at- 
mosphere of po' white trash, orange peels, pea- 

[91] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

nut shells and babies. The windows were 
hermetically sealed and resisted the apoplectic 
efiforts of Allan and the lumber merchant. We 
had been delayed for five hours, and should have 
been nearing the end of our journey if Fate, or 
that dangerous curve, had not arranged that we 
should travel through North Carolina in the aft- 
ernoon instead of the morning. As the hot sun 
slanted lower and lower into the West, it rimmed 
the endless forests of short-leaf pine with gold 
and cast long shadows, grotesque and contorted, 
across the shrub. Now and then the monotony 
of the pine forests gave way to groves of green 
trees or to wide fields of cotton, and because I 
had been taught to recognise the leguminous 
peanut, I saw whole acres given over to its culti- 
vation. 

In Rockymount we were in the centre of a 
great tobacco-growing country. We were told 
by a polite but uncertain young man at the sta- 
tion that we could get a train on to Wilmington 
"somewhere around ten o'clock," so we had sup- 
per at the nearest hotel, which lived up to our 
idea of what a Southern hotel should look like 
by carrying its portico several stories high and 
holding it aloft with slender, white pillars. The 
dining-room was cool and clean and apparently 
patronised exclusively by fat travelling sales- 

[92] 



OF THE SOUTH 

men. The young waitresses wore pretty blue 
linen dresses and seemed possessed of a fierce 
respectability. The lumber merchant, who was 
still with us, smiled his engaging smile and de- 
scribed in eloquent Virginian the state of our 
appetites. If he had been offering to elope with 
the haughty blue-linen waitress, her scorn and 
indifference could not have been surpassed. She 
dropped her eyes, passed one limp, white hand 
over the amazing smoothness of her pompadour 
and ignored the jest. 

''Will you have your chicken fried," she 
asked, in a cold voice, "or boiled?" 

"Boiled," said the lumber merchant briefly. 
And his smile died like the sun going behind a 
cloud. 

After dinner we walked through the quiet, 
well-paved streets of the little city. A white 
moon sailed high behind fleecy clouds, caught 
in an enormous hoop of opalescent light. The 
night was mild and still, with scarcely a flicker 
of wind to stir the tops of the trees. There is 
something fascinating about such a transient 
hour in a strange city. There is a strong sense 
of unreality in the brief pause among things only 
half seen, among people whose lives are wholly 
mysterious. The lighted windows of the houses 
mean nothing friendly or inviting. The names 

[93] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

of the streets are ciphers. There is no direction, 
no purpose, no familiarity. You walk through 
a little world forever alien to you and sniff an 
atmosphere "between two trains." All I remem- 
ber of Rockymount is a lighted church before 
whose open door we paused a moment to watch 
a minister thundering inaudibly at a patient con- 
gregation. And, again, the shadowy outlines 
of a big tobacco warehouse, where the tobacco 
leaves are brought to be assorted, graded and 
labelled, and then sold at auction to buyers from 
all over the world. With tobacco selling as 
high as twenty cents a pound, I could imagine 
some lively bidding under the wide-spreading 
roofs of those Rockymount warehouses! I re- 
member, too, a broad shopping street inconven- 
iently divided by a network of railroad tracks. 
And I remember that I began to notice for the 
first time a broadcast politeness everywhere, 
soft voices, gentle manners and a bland good 
humour. 

"We must be really in the South," I said to 
Allan, "for all the men, middle class and upper 
class, say 'yessir' to each other." 

"Yessir," agreed the lumber merchant, "they 
do!" 

And while we all laughed, we had to agree 
that Southern manners are as good as they are 

[94] 



OF THE SOUTH 

famous. Everywhere we met gentle, courteous 
people. No one ever seemed to be in too great 
a hurry to answer our questions or to set us on 
the right path when our tourist feet had sadly 
gone astray, or to give us helpful advice. If 
the Mason-Dixon line has not been wholly 
erased, it is not likely that North and South will 
ever again trip over it. Our differences have 
resolved into family spats — in the vital issues 
we will stand together. England and America 
have been quarrelling for years over the proper, 
decent and civilised way to eat eggs. England 
took a stand and said, "Eggs shall be eaten in 
the shell." America, hurt to the quick, took a 
stand and said, "Eggs shall be eaten in a cup." 
For years the resentment alternately smouldered 
and flared. And now we have witnessed the 
miracle of Americans eating eggs in the shell 
and Englishmen scraping eggs out of a cup. 
Allies! Hand in hand, shoulder to shoulder, 
eggs any way you say, brother! So it goes. , . . 
Hate dies more easily than love and it is hard 
to remember an old pain. Wherever we went 
in the South the moving-picture theatres were 
showing the most incendiary and poignant Civil 
War story that has ever been told — "The Birth 
of a Nation." Posters of Grant and Lee clasp- 
ing hands were displayed everywhere; the Ku- 

[95] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

Klux Klan thundered across every signboard; 
all the bitterness and tragedy of the Reconstruc- 
tion was enacted night after night in the flicker- 
ing darkness of the Cinemas to crowded houses. 
It seems that we have become dispassionate, and 
that hate and rancour have been buried with 
another generation. Only the Southerner says, 
very apologetically, "Allies! You may eat fried 
chicken and hominy. But please excuse me, 
brother, from pork and beans!" 

The lumber merchant escorted us to our train 
where we had a joyous reunion with Captain 
Clarke, who was finishing out his run to Wil- 
mington on a special train run either for our 
benefit or else for the purely mathematical pur- 
pose of meeting Captain Clarke's professional 
schedule. For we were the only passengers. 
And at four in the morning, just as the first faint 
blueness of dawn was pulsing in the east, we 
staggered into Wilmington and startled the 
sleeping night clerk of the Orton Hotel by 
pounding on the front door. It hardly seemed 
worth while to go to bed, but we went with 
enthusiasm, drawing the shades to shut out the 
deepening light and falling to sleep before our 
soot-grimed cheeks touched the pillows. 

I woke with a terrifying sense of unfamiliar- 
ity. Which was the door and which was the 

[96] 



OF THE SOUTH 

window? Was it moonlight or sunlight that 
fell in a dazzling band across my eyes? I sat 
bolt upright, and shrieked in a panic, "Allan! 
What's this?" 

"What's what?" came his reassuring voice 
from the next room. 

"This place?" 

"Wilmington." A pause, then a long sigh. 
"Isn't it?" 

"North Carolina?" 

"I reckon so." 

"Oh, for heaven's sake, you're not going to 
cultivate a Southern accent, are you?" I wailed, 
and fell flat on my pillows again. 

Suddenly there was a terrific shout. Allan 
appeared in the doorway, wrapped in bedclothes 
like the ghost in "Hamlet" and brandishing his 
watch with violent and hysterical gestures. "Do 
you know what time it is?" he roared. 

"No," I said, in a thin, small voice. 

"It's three o'clock!" 

"Morning or afternoon?" 

"Three o'clock," he repeated, biting ofif each 
word with the intensity of a Booth-Barrett tra- 
gedian, "in the afternoon." 

I tried to brush the offending streak of sun- 
light out of my eyes. "Wilmington, North Caro- 
lina," I said dreamily, "three o'clock in the aft- 

[97] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

ernoon. . . . Telephone down to the office and 
ask them to send breakfast up — at once." 

''And when," Allan asked in a tragic voice, 
"do you expect to have dinner?" 



[98] 



CHAPTER V 

PALMS AND SPANISH MOSS AT LAST, AND WE 

MAKE OUR BOW TO ARISTOCRATIC 

MADAME CHARLESTON 




E were undoubtedly in the South at 
last for the air was mild and the sun, 
when it shone at all, was deliciously 
warm. We knew we were in the 
South because we saw palms growing out of 
doors — not the potted variety so popular at 
weddings, funerals and Tammany Hall recep- 
tions, but tall, crisp palms actually thriving in 
the open air in mid-winter. It filled us with 
delight when we realised that we had at last 
attained a climate where palms would grow out 
of doors, yet with characteristic impatience wc 
were not content to witness one miracle but de- 
manded another. 

Was there any Spanish moss in Wilmington? 
We stopped at the first drugstore and asked the 
burning question of a startled clerk who ex- 
pected a demand for bicarbonate of soda or cold 
cream and had to pull himself together before 

[^9] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

he could answer. Spanish moss? Well, he 
reckoned so — had we tried Greenfield Park? 

We had not. The clerk followed us to the 
door and explained the trolley system of Wil- 
mington in detail, confusing us to such an extent 
that we decided to walk to Greenfield Park. 
Alas! for our over-zealous enthusiasm! The 
road was thick with white dust and led us 
through Wilmington and into its forlorn and 
dismal suburbs. We had heard, to quote a 
proud citizen of Wilmington, that "no buzzard 
had set foot in the city for over three years," 
and although we did not know whether the black 
scavengers had a tacit understanding with the 
city authorities, it is perfectly true that the only 
buzzards we saw lingered morosely in the sub- 
urbs. We admired the big birds for their leis- 
urely manners and for the upward tilt of their 
wide wings. Like darkies, they seemed to en- 
joy warm, sunny places, long hours of sleepy 
contemplation and 'most anything to eat. 

Greenfield proved to be an ungarnished wil- 
derness of pines and live oaks, the summer para- 
dise of merry-making Wilmington. The pavil- 
ions and the restaurants were closed and the 
piers and bath-houses that fringe the lake were 
deserted. But there was moss — lots and lots of 
it — hanging in bedraggled festoons from the 

[100] 



OF THE SOUTH 

branches of a row of decaying trees that rose out 
of the centre of the lake like drenched skeletons. 
We stood on the shore and contemplated the 
spectacle as we would have stared for the first 
time at the pyramids of Egypt. Allan strove for 
enthusiasm, but his voice was hollow. He said 
that the ghostly trees, the ashen, pendant moss, 
the dull blackness of the water, reminded him of 
the fantastic illustrations of Dulac and Kay 
Nielsen. But I knew that Spanish moss had 
been a terrible disappointment, for he made no 
move to open his pochade box or to settle down 
on the water's edge for an hour of enthusiastic 
work. 

We were very polite to each other as we 
skirted the lake, avoiding any mention of Span- 
ish moss as if we had created an egregious social 
error in not liking it. It was as if we had come 
face to face with a source of universal enthusi- 
asm, like the Sphinx, and had felt no emotion 
at all. We avoided the issue by striking up a 
conversation with a small boy who had been 
fishing in the lake and was tying his boat with 
vicious jerks to one of the tumble-down recrea- 
tion piers. 

''Any fish in the lake?" we asked. 

"Yep. Bass." 

"Any luck to-day?" 

[101] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

The small boy scowled. ''Nope. Caught one, 
but he slipped through a crack in the boat." 

"Oh I Is it nice here in summer?" 

"Yep. There's a band." 

You must admit that we were rather pathetic 
about it. We followed the small fisherman as 
far as the edge of the park, and when he turned 
aside there, we boarded a convenient trolley car 
because we were afraid to be left alone. It was 
an absorbing trolley car and occupied our whole 
attention because the motorman "doubled his 
role" and took the conductor's part, dashing 
from the front of the car to the rear and dis- 
playing such feverish energy that we wondered 
whether he drew double pay, like a protean 
actor, for the feat. 

But such speculation could not forever put off 
the question of Spanish moss. Back in Wilming- 
ton again, the truth came out. "I don't like it," 
I whispered to Allan. "Do I dare say so in the 
book?" 

Allan confessed that he would as soon slander 
his great grandmother as to blacken the reputa- 
tion of Spanish moss. "It is the mainstay of the 
Southern landscape," he said, "the prop, the 
keystone." And he added solemnly, "They 
won't read another page." 

But you will, won't you, if I declare myself 

[102] 



OF THE SOUTH 

here and now a profound lover of other South- 
ern specialties — golden jessamine and roses, 
honeysuckle, fragrant box hedges, nightingales 
and mocking birds, plantation voices, good man- 
ners and beautiful architecture? These things 
are not fallacies south of the Mason-Dixon line, 
they are adorable realities. Only I cannot write 
myself down, being a sort of feminine George 
Washington when it comes to my likes and dis- 
likes, as an open-mouthed worshipper of an ash- 
en, destructive parasite which destroys beautiful 
trees and, if given a good start, thinks so little 
of its environment that it will grow, and flourish, 
on a telegraph wire! Spanish moss takes its be- 
ing and its sustenance from the air, like slander 
and evil, and thrives, like slander and evil, on 
the death of something beautiful. I would tear 
its thick webs down from the gnarled branches 
of the beautiful oaks and give the trees life again, 
nor would I shed a tear for the over-advertised 
parasite, since I have shed them all for its vic- 
tims. 

Wilmmgton is so far from the sea that it might 
never have been a port at all if a wide stretch 
of water had not decided to enter the land by 
way of Cape Fear, bringing commerce to Wil- 
mington to-day just as it brought pirates and 
privateers a hundred years ago. The pirates 

[103] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

have long since been sent where pirates ought 
to go, but commerce still comes to Wilmington 
in spite of the fact that the city's chief import 
has no way of getting out of war-locked Ger- 
many. Two of the last German ships to bring 
fertiliser chemicals to Wilmington are interned 
in the harbour to-day, a striking proof that Bri- 
tannia still rules the waves. Chile supplies the 
deficit and Wilmington, undeterred by war, 
sends ship after ship loaded with cotton down 
through Cape Fear to the sea. 

Cape Fear's dark history attracted us and all 
through one merry morning we went in pursuit 
of it, going from bookstore to bookstore only to 
be met with polite regrets and the assurance that 
if we could "get hold" of Mr. James Sprunk 
we could learn all there is to know about Cape 
Fear. Mr. Sprunk had written a book called 
"Cape Fear Legends," stories of buccaneers and 
ghosts and pleasant adventurers, and while no 
one in Wilmington possessed a copy every one 
had heard of Mr. Sprunk's knowledge of the 
North Carolina legends. We finally went to 
Mr. Sprunk's ofiice, lured by the growing fame 
of his book, and made our embarrassed plea to a 
positive clerk who told us that Mr. Sprunk was 
"in conference" and would we please write down 
our reasons for calling. He thrust a pad of 

[104] 



OF THE SOUTH 

paper and a pencil through his wicker cage and 
we fled, feeling that by no possible stretch of 
newsgatherer's impudence could we send word 
to Mr. Sprunk "in conference" that we wanted 
to read his '^Cape Fear Legends." We went 
back to the Orton Hotel, and after a conference 
of our own decided upon the cowardly expedient 
of calling Mr. Sprunk on the telephone. In a 
thin, small voice I gave the number to the Wil- 
mington exchange while Allan hovered in the 
background with one hand on the door-knob 
ready for flight. 

"Hello!" 

The die was cast. "Is this Mr. Sprunk?" said 
I. 

"No, this is Mr. Sprunk's secretary. Mr. 
Sprunk is in conference " 

"Good Lord," I whispered hoarsely to Allan, 
"he is still " 

"I beg your pardon? Who is this, please?" 

I confessed in a panic, "Miss Cram," and 
halted miserably. Allan opened the door and 
balanced on the threshold. 

"Miss Cram?" 

"Yes — I, well, you see, I want to find out 
something about the Cape Fear legends — pirates, 
Indians and all that sort of thing." 

The voice at the other end of the 'phone grew 

[105] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

querulous. ''I can't hear a word you say. 
Louder, please!" 

Louder, please! 

"Here," I shrieked at Allan, ''you explain 



But he was gone, calling over his shoulder as 
he ran, "Ring off, you fool!" 

I rang off, unable to bear the spluttering and 
justifiable rage that burned the wires across Wil- 
mington. I went down stairs, still blushing 
hotly to the rim of my hat, and found Allan in 
cozy conversation with the hotel clerk. "Here's 
a man who can help us," Allan shouted, as if 
jaunty nonchalance could efface the memory of 
his cowardice. "Mr. Gregson here says to call 
on the Star/' 

"Mr. Gregson here" did not intend to be po- 
litely sardonic for it was not his intention to 
insinuate that we had hitched our wagon to a 
comet. Like every one else in the South he was 
kind to tourists in distress, and he meant the 
morning newspaper when he advised our calling 
on the Star, The Star was at home and received 
us, in the genial person of Mr. Claussen, in the 
editorial rooms in an atmosphere endearingly 
familiar to me of proof-sheets and ink, clippings, 
glue, encyclopaedias and waste-paper baskets. 
Mr. Claussen is an enthusiastic believer in the 

[106] 



OF THE SOUTH 

new South, the inventor of its commercial slogan, 
and one of its most brilliant editors. He would 
not tell us about Cape Fear. "You must see Mr. 
Sprunk for that," he said, and our hearts dropped 
into our boots. But he did tell us about North 
Carolina in the "Indian days," when the Chero- 
kee and Tacawbe nations were still to be reck- 
oned with as enemies of the white planter. The 
early settlers were repeatedly massacred by the 
Indians, the white women were carried away by 
them and there was more than one instance of 
"lost settlements" when whole groups of colo- 
nists disappeared mysteriously and were never 
seen or heard of again. South Carolina suffered 
the same fate, for the Yemasses were encouraged 
by the Spaniards of St. Augustine to attack the 
English at Charleston and the Tuscaroras were 
implacable enemies. Mrs. Ravenel in her de- 
lightful book, "Charleston, the Place and the 
People," says that "on the family tree of the 
Bulls, opposite the name of John, youngest son 
of the emigrant Stephen, stands 'first wife carried 
ofif by Indians 1715.' They lived at Bulls near 
Coosaw Island, just above St. Helena, and were 
in the very track of the storm. He, too, became 
an 'Indian fighter.' Another woman, Mrs. Bur- 
rows, was taken by a 'scalping party' and car- 
ried with her child to St. Augustine. The child 

[107] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

cried and was instantly killed, and she was 
ordered, under pain of death, not to weep for 
him! After being kept a prisoner for several 
years, she was allowed to return to Charles- 
ton, where she told the governor that the 
'Huspah King' who had captured her had told 
her that his orders from Spain were to kill every 
white man and bring every negro alive to St. 
Augustine and that rewards were given for such 
services." 

So were the Indians made the dupes of un- 
scrupulous white men and so were the harassed 
colonists tried sorely in their efforts to settle the 
wilderness of America. To-day the Cherokees 
and Tacawbes of North Carolina are practically 
extinct; a few of them live on reservations in 
the interior of the State, a broken and dying 
remnant of a great people. It will not be long 
before all memory of them will be lost forever, 
and like the mysterious Etruscans of Italy only 
their burial mounds and broken fragments of 
beautiful pottery, arrow heads, primitive battle 
axes and agricultural implements will tell the 
story of their amazing and brief existence. Mr. 
Claussen told us that when he was a boy the 
Indians picked cotton on his father's plantation, 
doing that menial work on the site of an ancient 
Indian battlefield where every turn of the 

[108] 



OF THE SOUTH 

plough unearthed some trophy of their heroic 
past. The Indians despised the negroes and the 
negroes were horribly afraid of the redmen, but 
the simple and anything but belligerent slaves 
gradually outnumbered the warriors, winning a 
racial victory that may have simplified a great 
many things for the white man. An equal ratio 
of increase might have presented some embar- 
rassing problems. 

To-day the negroes of Wilmington rest secure 
in their victory and the proud and lonely Ta- 
cawbe who occasionally comes to town must 
wonder at the obscure methods of destiny. All 
along the waterfront the conquerors sit in som- 
nolent groups, swinging their feet over the 
water, their shoulders hunched, their battered 
hats over their eyes, watching a fish-hook at- 
tached to a piece of twine and lowered more as 
an excuse for sitting still than as a lure for pass- 
ing fish. The sun beats down on them, the sky 
is blue over them and the lazy days are made 
for much song, much sleep and a little work. 

Mr. Claussen remembered a story, popularly 
believed in Wilmington, of President Wilson's 
boyhood, and it is worth repeating, I think, to 
prove my theory that great men must be aware 
of their destiny while they are still in knicker- 
bockers. The Cherry Tree incident could only 

[109] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

have been arranged with one eye on future gen- 
erations of hero-worshipping little liars. Lincoln 
and the sum in arithmetic on a shingle could 
only have been an inspired forethought. Wil- 
son's story is not generally known, but it is a 
classic and deserves to be taught in our public 
schools. The future coiner of "Too proud to 
fight" set the scene for his infant prodigiousness, 
if I may put it that way, at the old swimming- 
hole in Wilmington. The town bullies, all big- 
ger and stronger than the young Wilson, had set 
upon a little pickaninny. They were pelting 
their victim with sharp stones when the future 
president made his entrance. Peace without 
victory did not enter the prodigy's mind; he at- 
tacked all of the bullies at once, vanquished them 
and then, with his arm around the rescued picka- 
ninny, delivered his first ultimatum to a ruth- 
less enemy. "Never," said he, in a clear voice 
calculated to ring through the ages, "never hit 
a feller when he's down." 

The story is true because the little pickaninny 
grew up the proud possessor of a scar and a 
long memory. When Wilson fulfilled his essen- 
tial destiny and entered the White House, he re- 
ceived a letter from the co-protagonist of his 
first public appearance. He answered it, and 
there is one glorified black man in Wilmington 

[110] 




CHARLESTON IS CAUGHT INTO A DREAM OF THE 
ROMANTIC PAST 



OF THE SOUTH 

to-day who boasts of having in his possession a 
personal letter from the President of the United 
States. 

We were so charmed by the tale that we for- 
got for the moment our pursuit of Mr. Sprunk 
and his Cape Fear legends. The Cape Fear 
River used to be the stronghold of those roving, 
free-living and free-spending gentlemen of the 
skull and crossbones. They made Cape Fear 
and its convenient shelter a hiding place whence 
they swooped down on merchantmen from the 
North and South, and rid as many Spanish gal- 
leons as possible of their rich cargoes. We felt 
that Mr. Sprunk had some valuable material 
for his book because trans-Atlantic travel was as 
ticklish a business in the eighteenth century as it 
is in the enlightened present, and Cape Fear was 
infested, not with U-boats, but with pirates. An 
amazing number of ships were captured along 
the coast, nor were matters improved by king's 
pardons and the glamour of romance. Even 
gentlemen took to piracy and called themselves 
illicit traders, which fooled no one. The most 
appealing of those fashionable adventurers was 
Stede Bonnet, who had been a major in the army 
and a man of wealth and position. He aban- 
doned society for life under the Jolly Roger, not 
an impossible transfer when one considers the 

[111] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

nature of the society. His destiny is interwoven 
with that of Wilmington, for he was captured 
at the mouth of the Cape Fear River by Colonel 
Rhett, who came up from Charleston with two 
sloops and bagged the fastidious pirate in his 
den. 

Bonnet escaped from Charleston in women's 
clothes and led the English a merry chase before 
he was recaptured and finally hanged by the neck 
and buried (we hope for good) where the Bat- 
tery gardens are to-day. Mrs. Ravenel says that 
Bonnet, who was a sort of pirate Raffles, plead 
for his own life with elegance and piety, and 
that Chief Justice Trott, who tried him by an 
old statute of Henry VHI, answered with 
exalted sarcasm: "You being a Gentleman and 
a Man of letters I believe it will be needless 
for me to explain to you the nature of Repent- 
ance and faith in Christ. Considering the course 
of your life and actions I have reason to fear 
that the principles of Religion that have been 
instilled into you by your Education have been 
at least corrupted if not entirely defaced by the 
scepticism and infidelity of this wicked Age." 

So there were eloquent criminals, impression- 
able juries, bitter prosecuting attorneys and a 
conviction of the wickedness of the age even 

[112] 



OF THE SOUTH 

then! Is it possible that the same things will 
exist two hundred years from now? 

We hurried on to Charleston because we 
knew that we would never "get hold" of Mr. 
Sprunk and that while there was some slight 
comfort in being shown around the cotton ware- 
houses and the fertiliser plants, nothing but 
"Cape Fear Legends" could fill the gaping void 
in our visit to Wilmington. While we were 
paying our bill at the Orton Hotel, nice Mr. 
Gregson, who was in a civic panic (if there is 
such a thing) over our abrupt departure, had a 
sudden inspiration and declared that the Cap- 
tain of the Cape Fear steamer was just bound to 
have a copy. We brightened. Where was the 
Captain? He would be back in the morning 
. . . would we wait? 

We shook our heads sadly and departed, un- 
able to bear another disappointment. And as if 
depressed by our failure, the country between 
Wilmington and Charleston was inconceivably 
desolate and forlorn. I held my little notebook 
open and a pencil poised just over the clean and 
inviting page, hoping to find something delec- 
table to write about. But the untidy landscape 
spun out behind us in an endless procession of 
dried tobacco fields, withered rows of shabby 
cotton, dirty villages, mud, swamps and sand. 

[113] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

But Charleston was true to herself and saw to 
it that our welcome wiped out the memory of 
the noteless trip. It was dark when we arrived 
and the little open carriage that took us from 
the station to the Charleston Hotel seemed to 
us to rattle and clop through a cobbled city of 
dreams. A pale moon, widely hooped and 
courted by a whole heavenful of languid stars, 
lighted the way, for Charleston is so much a 
city of the past and of the old world that she 
still permits you to see the moon and does not 
attempt to dazzle your eyes with garish street 
lamps and electric signs. The coloured driver 
clucked softly to his leisurely horse, and al- 
though it was late and we were tired and hun- 
gry we could have jogged on indefinitely, for 
the air was spicy with box, the aromatic dust 
of old walls and the tempered saltiness of the 
distant sea, and we caught glimpses of tangled 
gardens and wrought iron fences, pillared houses 
glowing whitely in the moonlight, exquisite 
doorways, churches and open squares and cob- 
bled streets, narrow alleys that turned abruptly 
aside and led the pursuing fancy into mysterious 
shadows. We sensed antiquity all about us, the 
rare charm of historic ground, for Charleston is 
like a beautiful house that has been lived in for 
countless generations, taking on a rare and very 

[114] 



OF THE SOUTH 

personal quality, a patina, an inimitable lustre. 
Charleston's charm is two-thirds atmospheric 
and one-third physical. It is as bewitchingly 
aristocratic as Bath, a most Bourbon city, ex- 
clusive, experienced and very simple as all true 
aristocrats are. There is a wistfulness about 
Charleston that is very appealing; like a delight- 
ful old chatelaine who has lived richly, suf- 
fered much and loved dearly, Charleston has 
become fragile and delicate, infinitely tender 
and most rarely sweet. 

To understand the peculiar charm of Charles- 
ton as it is to-day one must consider the infinite 
variety of people that went into the making of 
the modern Carolinian. Virginia was settled by 
adventurous Cavaliers, Maryland was first estab- 
lished by the Catholics who followed Lord Bal- 
timore, Pennsylvania fell to the Quakers and 
New England to the Puritans. But Charles- 
ton was laid upon a heterogeneous racial 
foundation and held together by English gover- 
nors and administrators. Dissenters from Scot- 
land, England and Ireland mingled with Eng- 
lish churchmen, and there were a certain num- 
ber of Dutch, Swiss, Belgians and Quakers be- 
sides the Huguenots, who came, four hundred 
and fifty strong, between 1680 and 1688. The 
aristocracy which grew out of this astounding 

[115] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

assortment of peoples was an aristocracy of 
planters and merchants. Rice was the chief 
product of the Carolinas until 1865, and Mrs. 
Ravenel says that its planters were the 'domi- 
nant class of Charleston, socially and politi- 
cally." The country gentleman was at his best 
in Carolina; he was a man of breeding, educa- 
tion and wealth; he lived on great plantations 
in the centre of vast-spreading rice fields, he 
was a slave owner, his children were educated 
abroad, and while his life was never lazy or 
exaggeratedl}^ luxurious, he lived well, with a 
certain amount of state and formality. As time 
passed and the first hardships of settling the new 
colony lessened, life in Charleston patterned it- 
self more and more after that of England. A 
city of beautiful houses took the place of the first 
primitive settlement, a very individual and suc- 
cessful architecture appeared, gardens were laid 
out and such luxuries as silver, pewter, jewelry, 
fine furniture, laces, satins, mirrors, china and 
rare wines were imported from Europe. There 
were horse races, theatres, dinners and balls for 
the amusement of the upper classes. The races 
took place at the New Market course not far 
from the city, and while the fashionable planter 
and his family went in great style, countrymen 
of the "cracker" type from the District and all 

[116] 



OF THE SOUTH 

of the slaves thronged to the race, too, on foot 
or in primitive carts and wagons. 

Dinners, balls and receptions, under the aris- 
tocratic administration of the English governors, 
were formal and probably a very good imita- 
tion of English functions. The planter did not 
want the mother-country to look down her criti- 
cal nose at him, but of course she did. The snug 
little island was as contemptuous of her prov- 
inces then as she is to-day — or, rather, as she 
was until recently. The world w^ar brought 
Canada and Australia and New Zealand very 
close to snobbish England's heart and she may 
no longer ignore them. But when Charleston 
was an English colony she suffered under the 
criticisms of her Lords Proprietors. When 
James Glenn came out from England to be gov- 
ernor of the province he wrote back to the Lords 
of Trade that he could not help expressing his 
surprise and concern to find that there were 
"annually imported into this Province consider- 
able quantities of Fine Flanders lace, the Finest 
Dutch Linens and French Cambricks, Chintz, 
Hyson Tea and other East India Goods, Silks, 
Gold and Silver Laces, etc." "The quantity is 
too great," he wrote, "and the quality too fine 
and ill calculated for the circumstances of an 
Infant Colony." 

[117] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

But the planters and merchants of Charleston 
were not rebuked to the extent of putting aside 
their harmless little luxuries. Dinners were 
served by negro servants at long tables spread 
with fine linen and set with rare china and cut 
glass. Dances were given in the large drawing 
rooms; the floors were polished like mirrors, 
the crystal chandeliers glittered and blinked like 
fairy cobwebs and candles flickerdd in the 
sconces on the walls. It must have been far 
lovelier than anything we can do nowadays in 
the way of dinners and dances, in spite of elec- 
tric lights and tango orchestras and exhaustless 
debutantes, all arms and tulle, giving their frag- 
ile lives to gaiety! The most expensive modern 
caterers could scarcely equal the dishes con- 
cocted by the negro cooks of the period, who 
brought West Indian recipes from the Islands 
and laid the foundations for the fame of South- 
ern cooking — turtle and fresh-water terrapin, 
rice and chicken, soups and fish, all sorts of 
sweets and cakes to be eaten with Madeira wine 
and punch and thin glasses of port! 

But life was not made up of pretty pleasures. 
The Carolinian planter had to manage his es- 
tates, discipline and guide his slaves, attend to 
the manifold details of a large establishment — 
the crops, the stables, the negro quarters — and 

[118] 




Till': BKAIIIILL SUITH PURIAL OF Si. FillLiF" S 
CHURCH 



OF THE SOUTH 

be father, judge, confessor and farmer all in 
one. He had, besides, to cope with the Indians, 
with the dangers and difficulties of the Revolu- 
tionary War, with epidemic sicknesses and with 
the elements. Charleston seems to be in the 
path of cyclones and^hurricanes and to lie with- 
in the earthquake zone, for time and time again 
the city has been blown to smithereens and 
rocked to its foundations and burned to the 
ground. There could have been no lack of ex- 
citement in the Carolinian planter's life! 

The last earthquake, which took place an un- 
comfortably short time ago, in 1886, drove the 
sixty thousand inhabitants of the city out of their 
houses and was only prevented from destroying 
everything by some trick of an obscure and un- 
stable Providence. Walls were strained and 
cracked to the breaking point but still stood 
upright; roofs sagged, towers leaned precari- 
ously, chimneys toppled over — but Charleston 
was saved. And those of us who care more for 
architecture than for anything which comes out 
of the brain and the heart of man, ought to stand 
at the corner of Meeting and Broad Streets and 
cheer three times — once for the merciful earth- 
quake, once for Charleston and once for St. 
Michaers Church, miraculously spared for our 
delectation. 

[119] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

When the earthquake "happened" (one 
wouldn't say "quaked," would one?) Charleston 
was already unnerved by the cyclone of the year 
before which had unroofed houses, destroyed 
the water-front and flooded the whole city. The 
earthquake came "with a terrible roar, like an 
express train thundering through a valley," and 
for a few minutes Charleston reeled drunkenly. 
The negroes thought that the end of the world 
had come and rushed into the churches, the 
worst possible place for them, to shriek and pray. 
The tower of St. Michael's sank twenty inches, 
the whole foundation of the beautiful structure 
dropping fearfully as the earth shifted beneath 
it. And while its tilting is not as evident as that 
of the Garisenda and Asinella of Bologna, it is 
still quite visible from the street. We stood be- 
neath it and lifted our hats (this is quite figura- 
tive, of course) for having preserved its balance 
so long. 

Christopher Wren had his hand in the build- 
ing of St. Michael's. The steeple is as surely 
Sir Christopher's as the tower of the old church 
at York Harbor in Maine. Like St. Martin's- 
in-the-Fields, the church has a pillared portico 
and the splendid steeple shoots above it, dazzling 
white like a tall lily, visible for miles and domi- 
nating Charleston as surely as Giotto's tower 

[120] 



OF THE SOUTH 

dominates Florence. During the Civil War the 
Northerners fired at it from Morris Island, 
throwing shell after shell at the steeple with 
such poor marksmanship that no damage was 
done at all except to the body of the church. 
I should like to believe that the guardian saint 
of beautiful architecture, so conspicuously ab- 
sent at Rheims, directed the fire of the Federals 
on that occasion. 

We went to the vestry door and asked to be 
admitted, making our first pilgrimage in 
Charleston, as one always does, to St. Michael's. 
The vestryman admitted us with enthusiasm, but 
let us out again with reluctance. We learned 
from him that George Washington occupied 
one of the well-w^orn chairs in the Governor's 
pew, and that the present organist of St. 
Michael's is a direct descendant, six generations 
removed, of the man who installed the organ 
in the church. Possessed of that information, 
we moved toward the vestry door again followed 
by a little knot of New England tourists who 
had caught the same pearls of wisdom as they 
dropped from the vestryman's lips. But the ves- 
try door was securely locked and it stayed locked 
while the canny vestryman sought to dispose of 
guide books and post cards. There is nothing 
more antagonistic than being "held up" in the 

[121] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

name of charity. Fifty cents for a guide book 
of Charleston was little enough, but we set our 
lips, closed our hands tightly on our purses and 
resisted pressure. We all blushed, not out of 
shame for our own penuriousness but for the 
persistence of the vestryman. One of the New 
England tourists rattled the door, another turned 
her back and awaited release in stolid silence. 
And to the bitter end, when the infuriated ves- 
tryman produced the key and let us out again, 
there was not a single clink of silver coins. I 
am possibly prejudiced but I think the Italian 
custode's method more artless; he blesses you 
and your grandmother, mentions the weather, 
smiles and holds out his hand. . . . 

We paused at John Rutledge's grave in the 
churchyard, wishing that we could have broken 
his quiet sleep long enough to thank him for 
having brought Charleston through the danger- 
ous period of the break with England and for 
having steered the cockleshell Ship of State to 
safety while all of Charleston was divided be- 
tween Whigs and Tories. The "shot heard 
'round the world" was indeed heard at Charles- 
ton, although the Carolinians might still have 
made peace with tax-mad England if England 
had listened to reason. The crisis, like all great 
national crises, produced men who were equal 

[122] 



OF THE SOUTH 

to the emergency — Francis Marion, Moultrie, 
Jasper, Haynes, Laurens, Rutledge — heroic 
names, all of them! Rutledge kept the torch 
of liberty burning at home while ''Marion's 
men" harassed the British troops, lying in am- 
bush in the swamps and forests, kept alive by 
the gifts of the devoted Whigs, subsisting on 
little or nothing at all and, under the inspired 
leadership of the fiery Huguenot, sweeping 
down on the unsuspecting English for fierce and 
generally victorious encounters and then disap- 
pearing again into the wilderness. 

If Pitt could have plead the colony's cause a 
little longer, the overseas empire might not have 
been disintegrated. Certainly South Carolina 
would have waited longer to make the break. 
But Pitt was dead and England had so far for- 
gotten his warnings that an English cannon ball 
struck the statue of the statesman that grateful 
Charleson had set up in the centre of the town 
and carried away one of the arms. To-day, the 
humiliated Pitt, like a male Venus de Milo, 
decorates Washington Square. The baroque 
statue has a nice air of antiquity, but Pitt is 
wrapped in draperies and looks as if he had just 
jumped out of bed, tangled in sheets and quilts. 
His eloauent gestures have dislocated his right 

[123] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

arm and he trips on his entangling bedclothes 
like a wild-eyed somnambulist. 

Charleston is open to attack to-day as it was 
during the Revolution. Standing on the Battery 
and looking out between Fort Moultrie, on Sul- 
livan's Island, and Fort Sumter to the open sea, 
we shuddered to think of the fate of the city in 
case of a bombardment by enemy ships. The 
two forts face each other across a narrow strip 
of water, and it must have been exciting work 
for the Federals and Confederates when they 
hurled shot and shell at each other for forty 
hours. The first battle of the Civil War was 
won by the Confederate garrison of Fort Moul- 
trie, but the fiery Secessionists did not for long 
have the upper hand. Charleston was bom- 
barded by the Northern army for five hundred 
and eighty-six days, suffering a martyrdom as 
severe as that of the cities of Northern France. 
The people moved back from the water-front or 
lived in cellars or took chances in the unpro- 
tected streets, growing as careless as the sorely 
tried French under fire. It is a miracle that 
any of the public buildings and residences of the 
city escaped, but they did. Charleston rose out 
of the ruin and desolation, out of the humilia- 
tion of defeat, the anguish of the Reconstruction, 
political corruption, financial collapse and social 

[124] 



OF THE SOUTH 

disintegration. The city to-day is slightly wist- 
ful, serene and extraordinarily proud. Owen 
Wister painted a perfect picture of the exclusive 
society of modern Charleston in "Lady Balti- 
more." He opened the stately doors of the old 
houses along the Battery and took us into the 
panelled drawing rooms so fragrant with the 
delicate aroma of the past; he permitted us to 
see behind the veil so jealously drawn across 
that unique little world of aristocrats. 

Charleston belongs to the past and will until 
the last house crumbles to dust and the last proud 
Tory is laid to rest in the churchyard of St. 
Philip's or St. Michael's. Charleston is perhaps 
the only city in America that has slammed its 
front door in Progress's face and resisted the 
modern with fiery determination. There are no 
skyscrapers, no blighting factory chimneys, no 
glaring electric signs. Even the street cars pro- 
ceed decorously, and one-horse cabs are more 
popular than taxis. Society stays behind closed 
doors or ventures out in state to ride or drive, 
and there is no preponderance of cheap and 
noisy po' white trash in the streets. Everything 
is leisurely and sleepy and mysteriously remi- 
niscent. One hears the soft chatter of the am- 
bling, ragged blacks, the twitter of birds, the 
clop of a lazy horse. Charleston is caught into 

[125] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

a dream of the romantic past. She sits quietly 
in her panelled drawing room, surrounded by 
beautiful things, and listens to dead voices with 
a beating heart. 

For Charleston is the personification of the 
most fugitive and intangible thing in the world. 
Charleston is a work of art. Like San Gimig- 
nano and Siena, Rothenburg and Mont St. 
Michel, it belongs in its entirety to a vanished 
past. It is a "museum piece" among cities, and 
there should be a wicket gate at the railroad 
station and a guard to warn you not "to touch, 
break or otherwise deface" the masterpiece. We 
hurried through the streets, whispering instinc- 
tively. 

In New England one comes upon Colonial 
architecture sandwiched in between Early and 
Late Victorian jigsaw atrocities. A gabled roof 
is often dwarfed by a showy Mansard, a fine 
brick chimney is spoiled by its field-stone neigh- 
bour, a fan doorway is lost in a wilderness of 
plate glass and walnut portals. But in Charles- 
ton the pursuit of beauty is simplified. Fine old 
buildings are displayed side by side, and one 
has only to advance crab fashion along the 
streets with Mrs. Ravencl's book in one hand 
and a map of the city in the other, to see the dis- 
tinctive architecture of South Carolina at its 

[126] 



OF THE SOUTH 

best and (to be Irish), at its anything but bad 
worst! 

"Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful!" we sang at 
every turning. And our song w^as like a fugue, 
or a litany, for one "beautiful" tripped on the 
heels of the other wherever we went. 

I can always find something to say about 
things I don't like, but face to face with perfec- 
tion, I am mute. I have stood in the gardens 
of the convent of the Blue Nuns at Fiesole and, 
gazing down across the olives and cypresses at 
Florence set like a jewel in the burnished shield 
of the Val d' Arno, I have said "Beautiful" and 
nothing more. Yet I have been comforted by 
just such speechlessness in really eloquent souls. 
Kipling looked down from Fiesole at the same 
miracle and while I gaped at him, expecting a 
torrent of superlatives — "Beautiful," he said! 
So I am in good company, like the cur that 
trotted under the king's carriage. 

"Beautiful," I said before the old Market at 
Charleston. It is set upon a deep basement like 
a Roman temple; a double flight of steps leads 
to the portico and a simple cornice is thrust 
aloft by four columns. There are many other 
examples of this domesticated classicism in the 
city — the Charleston Hotel, the Custom House, 
Gabriel Manigault's City Hall, the Pringle 

[127] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

House in King Street, the beautiful south portal 
of St. Philip's Church and Charleston College. 
The severity of the pillared porticoes is relieved 
by delicate w^rought iron railings, and the glar- 
ing whiteness of the columns has been tempered 
by w^ind and rain and sun. Age, which is so un- 
becoming to people, has made Charleston a place 
of rare beauty. Heaven grant that the City 
Fathers will never attempt to paint the f-aded 
walls, repair the peeling stucco and the rusted 
railings and weed the gardens! Only new cities 
need be kept in spick-and-span condition. 
Charleston, like an old civilisation, has won the 
right to be careless. St. Paul, on the other hand, 
has not! For cities are like people — only dukes 
know how to wear weather-beaten tweeds, only 
queens dare combine dowdy bonnets and dia- 
monds, only kings are regal in grey derbies and 
fawn-coloured cutaways, and only very old cities 
can afford to let grass grow in their streets and 
to torment the soles (and the souls) of their 
citizens with cobble-stones. 

Mr. Howells had put a literary bee in our 
bonnets and had set us in fevered pursuit of 
gates. And since Charleston is a city of gates 
we could not see them all. The famous brick 
gates of General William Washington's house 
on the Battery were easy to identify and we 

[128] 




*i2:r,|» J 



^.> -- <J 



THE SEVERITY OF THE PILLAKKl) HOKIICO IS RELIEVED 
BY DELICATE WROlGllI IRON RAILINGS 



OF THE SOUTH 

paused many times to peer through the Simon- 
ton gateway in Legare Street with its wrought 
iron lantern and the long walk beyond thickly 
shadowed by a compact arch of trees. But the 
[amazingly delicate and graceful gates of St. 
Michael's and St. Philip's held us longest. 

Carhoun is buried in the churchyard of St. 
Philip's. Like Pitt, he died too soon for Amer- 
ica's good. We came upon his simple tomb in 
the western churchyard after we had vainly 
searched for it nearer St. Philip's. I have 
avoided graveyards scrupulously since Edgar 
Lee Masters discovered that every epitaph con- 
ceals a tragedy. I used to believe all the glow- 
ing tributes and heartbreaking laments, and 
thought that every crumbling, moss-grown slab 
[concealed an angel until Mr. Masters happened 
along and unearthed the corruption beneath my 
feet. If Gray had read the "Spoon River An- 
thology," could he h^ave written the "Elegy"? 
I wonderl 

I had no sooner set foot in St. Philip's church- 
yard than I stumbled on a tragedy, a grim little 
tragedy! I give it to you for elaboration: 

"Died the 22nd of August 1799 
Joseph Jones of Milford 
State of Massachusetts 
[129] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

In the 62nd year of his Age 
After three Days of an 
Epidemic Sickness." 

Alas, that poets should open our eyes to such 
realism! We hurried out of the picturesque 
churchyard and forgot Joseph Jones' three days 
of epidemic sickness in peeping through 
wrought iron gates and over high walls at the 
lovelier epitaphs of two charming Charleston- 
ians, Dr. Garden and Mr. Poinsett, who named 
the gardenia and the gorgeous poinsettia and 
immortalised themselves in the petals of flowers. 
Charleston hides its gardens behind high walls 
and in courtyards, but every balcony is hung 
with vines, the polished leaves of the magnolias 
and palms thrust above the highest walls, and in 
the spring the whole city is fragrant with the 
perfume of mimosa and jessamine, violets and 
roses. The gardens were closed to us; we could 
only press our faces against the gates and stare 
wistfully in at their tangled loveliness, but the 
Battery was open to every one with no annoying 
"Keep off the grass" signs and lots of comfort- 
able benches in cool, shadowy places. I will 
leave you there, pacing up and down under the 
wide-spreading live oaks with the wind from the 
sea blowing freshly against you and Mrs. Rav- 
enel's book, newly cut, under your arm. For I 

[ISO] 



OF 'THE SOUTH 

have told you all I know (but not all I feel) 
about Charleston. Perhaps, when you have fin- 
ished the book, you will have dinner with us — 
we have ordered Edisto Island oysters, Mallard 
duck from Georgetown, a salad, a Southern 
sweet and coffee. . . „ 



[131] 



CHAPTER VI 



A CONFESSION OF LAZINESS IN SAVANNAH AND A 
STEP FURTHER SOUTH TO "jAX" 



BELIEVE Allan was tired of being 
addressed as ^'Cap" by bellboys and 
Pullman porters. Because he bears 
his thirty years seriously he aspired 
to "Colonel," remembering the story our father 
tells of the rural newspaper correspondent who 
misinterpreted his hieroglyphic signature and 
announced that "Colonel W. D. Wam" was "in 
our midst." Allan had always longed to be 
called "Colonel" on his own account, so before 
we left Charleston he went in search of a hatter 
and bought a broad-brimmed felt hat. The 
clerk who sold the disguise confided to us that 
he was "bored to death with Charleston," but 
that he was "just in love with Savannah." When 
pressed for reasons, he explained that Savannah 
was a "right lively town with lots of parks and 
all lit up at night." 

"I certainly do envy you-all going there," he 
said pathetically. 

[132] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

Allan, already wearing his Cy-arter of Cy- 
artersville hat and influenced by the subtle asso- 
ciation, craved the gaiety of this "lit up" Savan- 
nah. We took leave of the hat clerk and hurried 
back to the hotel agency to buy our tickets. 

"You can sit in the parks," Allan remarked 
suddenly, becoming audible after a long and 
pleasant contemplation. 

And I chortled angrily: "The hat clerk did 
not mean what you think he meant. He meant 
street lights, not mint-julep illumination. Parks 
indeed!" 

The ticket agent thought that we could catch 
the train to Savannah without any trouble. He 
wasn't quite sure when it would get into 
Charleston, for it was three and a half hours 
late. 

"Late?" 

The ticket agent seemed slightly embarrassed. 
"Yes'm. You see," he explained, casting madly 
about for reasons, it's a through train from the 
North, and they're having mighty cold weather 
in New York. Paper says it's down below zero." 

"I suppose you mean that Southern trains suf- 
fer from the cold." 

"Yes'm." The clerk giggled and rubbed his 
hands. "That's it. You'll want two tickets to 
Savannah, then?" 

[133] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

"If you are sure that the train is going to 
pass through Charleston at all to-day." 

The clerk became discreetly hysterical. He 
considered us great wags. He stamped the two 
tickets and shuffled them as if he were playing a 
hand at poker. 

"Can't you give us Pullman reservations?" 
Allan always asked this question, although he 
knew the answer by heart. 

"No, sir." The agent was positive. "You can 
get them on the train." 

But when the train finally ambled into 
Charleston, four hours late, every seat in the 
Pullman cars was occupied. A personally con- 
ducted "tower" of very old New England ladies 
was on its way to Florida, and had settled itself, 
apparently for life, in every available chair. 
So Allan was banished in lonely glory to the 
smoker, while a place was made for me beside 
an old lady Who surrendered to my being there 
rather through weakness than because of any 
charitable instinct. The "tower" was very, very 
tired and crumpled and bored. Their Personal 
Conductor had disappeared, probably to the rear 
platform to think of a new answer to the un- 
answerable question, "Why are Southern trains 
always late?" I daresay the inspired Charleston 
ticket agent's excuse had never occurred to him, 

[134] 



OF THE SOUTH 

although zero weather in New York was as good 

a reason as any other 

I sat rigidly at the New England spinster's 
side, trying to make myself as small as possible 
and staring out of the window at an endless 
panorama of swamps, at forests of ghostly trees 
dead in the suffocating embrace of hairy moss, 
at forlorn and untidy villages, at rice fields and 
tumble-down negro cabins, at whitewashed 
farm-houses set within corrals, at swamps and 
more swamps, until the spinning landscape be- 
came merely a repetition of itself. Whenever 
the train stopped, as it did very often (probably 
because of the cold up North), I went out to 
stand on the platform and to get a whiff of fresh 
air, for the old ladies apparently "towered" her- 
metically sealed against atmospheric contamina- 
tion. There always rose to me an ardent odour 
of pigs, pine trees, moss and evergreens, the 
characteristic flavour of the rural South. Little 
knots of people watched the arrival of the train 
at all of these small stations, and one or two 
country wagons, covered with mud and drawn 
by lazy, dozing horses, waited for possible pas- 
sengers or for a purely hypothetical freight. As 
the sun went down we entered timber lands, 
splendid forests of pine and cypress, blackly out- 

[135] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

lined against the magnificent conflagration in the 
west. 

Through it all the old ladies yawned and 
stifled little moans of weariness. One of them, 
outrageously fat, lay full length on one of the 
chairs, her ridiculously small feet held aloft on 
a pillow, her fat hand waving a palm leaf fan. 
She had been to Florida before on a half-for- 
gotten and wholly glorified honeymoon with 
"dear Mr. Hemingway, my first husband." She 
spoke with awe-inspiring familiarity of the 
"Pawnee de Leeon" at St. Augustine. She had 
never travelled in a personally conducted party 
before — they were vulgar and crowded and hur- 
ried. . . . Her voice, as acute as a buzz-saw, 
rasped the old ladies beyond endurance. One 
by one, as dusk fell, they put their little "trav- 
elling pillows" behind their aching heads and 
pretended to go to sleep. 

It seemed to us that the forests and tangled 
swamps gave way to civilisation and to paving 
stones at the very gates of the city, for Savannah 
was not heralded by any suburbs; the train 
passed out of the darkness of the open country 
into the station with no more warning than a 
few scattered houses and a straggling proces- 
sion of rural street lamps. 

Three soot-grimed travelling salesmen got into 

[136] 



OF THE SOUTH 

the Savannah Hotel 'bus with us. They had ap- 
parently been travelling and selling in small 
country towns, and the longing for sidewalks 
and asphalt, street cars, shops, bright lights and 
noise obsessed them, for they were New York- 
ers to the last "woid" in their vocabularies. As 
the 'bus rattled through Savannah they burst into 
hymns of joy. A live town! Look at the lights 
— clusters of 'em — and electric signs and sky- 
scrapers! It was not native soil, but to them it 
was flavoured with the essence of civilisation; it 
reflected New York and sent shivers of happi- 
ness through them. B rough ton Street was not 
Broadway — there is only one Broadway — but it 
was at least crowded with people, ablaze with 
light, draped in the shreds of their true god- 
dess's raiment. The sooty travelling salesmen 
were like pilgrims come upon a glimpse of 
Mecca. As we drew up at the door of the hotel 
and a crowd of bellboys and porters pounced 
on the luggage like buzzards, the three sales- 
men sighed profoundly. 

"A live town," they said, "at last!" 
Others of their genial class filled the gilt and 
marble lobby to suffocation and rejoiced openly 
in their native atmosphere of smoke, palms, 
page-boys, brass spittoons and leather lounge 
chairs. 

[137] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

The hotel graciously admitted having received 
our telegram and summoned a bellboy to show 
us the way to our rooms. We bewailed the cor- 
dial host of the past who offered the traveller 
not only shelter but hospitality. The clerk of a 
modern skyscraper hotel has no time for niceties ; 
he cannot build a fire on the hearth for you or 
attend himself to your dinner or gossip pleas- 
antly. He spins a huge key across the top of 
his desk, glances at your signature and raises 
two fingers, w4th the Pope's gesture, to summon 
a bellboy who will do the honours. We have 
often encountered darkies who, entrusted with 
this duty, felt the solemnity of the occasion. 
Many a coloured bellboy has swung wide our 
doors, and while waiting in delightful embar- 
rassment for his tip has wished us a "sho' enuff 
good time." Most darkies like formality and 
little courtesies; they respond to luxurious sur- 
roundings, to eloquence and to good breeding. 
They are children and actors, and their sim- 
plicity may be their ultimate salvation. 

But the bellboy who escorted us to our rooms 
in the Hotel Savannah was not a playboy of the 
Southern world, for he did not seem to think 
that the responsibility of our welcome rested 
on his shoulders. He put our suitcases down, 
deposited his tip and departed whistling "Un- 

[138] 



OF THE SOUTH 

derneath the Stars." The Savannah had another 
way of meeting its duties as host, for the rooms 
were plastered with warnings, advice, sugges- 
tions and threats, all neatly printed on cardboard 
placards and affixed to the wall where they 
would be most likely to catch the guest's eye. 
I read some of the paternal notices aloud, while 
Allan unstrapped the suitcases. 

" 'To our friends,' " the first one ran, disarm- 
ing resentment very coyly. " 'If you leave your 
windows open, please turn oflF radiator. We 
should not be expected to heat the outside of our 
building.' " 

"Good advice," Allan thought. 

"Yes," I agreed, "but offensive, just the same. 
Here's another. Listen to this one! 'Office 
buildings are opposite this room. If you desire 
privacy, lower your shades.' " 

Allan shouted with laughter. "Of all the in- 
fernal impudence! Go on — what else do they 
expect of us?" 

"Oh, the next one is harmless enough. "If 
you do not wish to be disturbed, please place 
this card on outside of door and remove when 
leaving room.' " 

"Thanks! What else?" 

" 'We do not have a half-day rate; when room 

[139] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

is assigned to any one we will collect for full 
day; " 

"It sounds like a model prison. Go on." 

" 'Turkish baths in basement,' " I read, "and 
here is another, attached to the telephone, which 
says, Tlease use the pad and spare the walls.' " 

We tried to meet all the requirements, and 
although it was very late went down to dinner, 
fearful of meeting with more printed warnings 
on the way. The dining room was not crowded, 
but it was "lit up" just as the hat-clerk in 
Charleston had said all of Savannah would be, 
and as an added attraction a whole series ©f 
bells, attached to the wainscoting and operated 
by electricity, played popular tunes to drown 
out the crasih of crockery and the weaker efforts 
of the hotel orchestra. We reverted to type and 
abandoned chicken for steak, the best steak I 
have ever tasted, North or South. And the 
chronicle of the evening might ihave been a 
gourmet's pleasure if a page-boy had not come 
into the dining room shouting aloud for "Major 
General Leonard Wood." 

Every one started and turned to stare at the 
erect, handsome man who called the page-boy to 
his table, and our waiter, creeping very close to 
whisper, told us that it was the General Wood 
who had been dining so inconspicuously just 

[140] 




-GRKAr SHIPS COME EIGHTKKX MILES FROM THE SEA 
TO SAVANNAETS FRONT DOOR-STEP 



OF THE SOUTH 

across the room. We had seen Raymond Hitch- 
cock at the Monticello in Norfolk, Sarah Bern- 
hardt had appeared for a moment on the plat- 
form of her private car, the "Mayflower," when 
we were waiting in the Charleston station for 
our train, and here was America's greatest gen- 
eral not ten feet away! We tried not to stare, 
but I found several excuses to turn my head in 
his direction. 

After dinner we went out into crowded 
Broughton Street to look for a book store, and 
possibly to find a guide that would set our tour- 
ist feet on the right paths. We discovered a 
bookseller, but he had no guide book to offer 
us, shrugging his shoulders at our preposterous 
assumption that the history of Savannah could 
be reduced to a few paragraphs and sold to lazy 
trippers for a quarter. He led me into the back 
of his shop and pointed to a revolving bookcase 
full of heavy, thick, dust-powdered volumes, 
and as he wheeled the bulging shelves for my in- 
spection he ran his finger over the titles. There 
were histories of Georgia in three ponderous 
volumes, histories of Savannah's settlement, its 
Revolutionary struggles, its great men ; there 
were stories of John Wesley, who preached for 
the first time in America on the spot where the 
Savannah Custom House now stands; there were 

[141] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

bulky Civil War histories, memoirs and biog- 
raphies, harbour reports, trade statistics. At 
each revolution of the bookcase I beheld new 
histories — illustrated histories bound frivolously 
to attract the sluggish traveller's eye; fat, busi- 
nesslike histories bursting with dates and infor- 
mation. "Life of Oglethorpe," "Life of Wes- 
ley," "Life of Aaron Burr," "Life of Jefiferson 
Davis," "Life of Lafayette," "The Civil War," 
"The Reconstruction." . . » 

"All Georgiana," said the bookseller, giving 
the bookcase another twist and blowing away 
the dust that had settled on the gilt-edged pages 
of a history of the American Revolution. 

All Georgiana! 

I turned in a panic to Allan. "I am going 
back to New York," I threatened. "I cannot 
write the history of Savannah in a chapter lim- 
ited, by contract, to five thousand words. It isn't 
fair," I wailed, becoming tearful, "to expect it 
of me." 

We stared at the groaning bookcase in morose 
silence, while the bookseller, suddenly sympa- 
thetic, looked over the top of his spectacles and 
asked, "Are you goin' to write a book?" in the 
tone of voice which implies "Are you thinking 
of jumping over the moon, by any chance?" 

[142] 



OF THE SOUTH 

"No," I retorted, turning on my heel, "I've 
given up all thought of it." 

Outside in Broughton Street again I gave way 
to a violent attack of nerves. "You will have to 
take me to the movies," I said pitifully, "where 
I can forget Georgiana. I think Savannah must 
be the most historically complicated city in the 
world." 

"You can skip it in the book," Allan said. He 
really believed I could, for he only sketches 
what interests him and I have to manoeuvre, un- 
til the machinery of my literary style creaks, to 
write paragraphs that can be used as captions 
for his drawings. "You ought to be able to do 
something about it," he said, as we hurried up 
Broughton Street in search of a cinema. "Touch 
lightly on Savannah and bear down heavily on 
St. Augustine." 

Vaguely comforted but not convinced, I fol- 
lowed him into an Arabian Nights' theatre, an 
Orientalised nightmare place made of card- 
board, coloured electric lights, gilt and pink 
paint. A very sallow young man stood in the 
lobby and sprayed cheap perfume over us as we 
passed into the pitch darkness of the theatre, 
whether as a prevention or as a compliment we 
could not discover. Reeking, we stumbled into 
our seats and glanced up at the screen just in 

[143] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

time to see Theda Bara strangled. Behind us, 
row after row of people, reeking, too, surged up- 
ward in a huge amphitheatre, so that the last 
row of white faces, glowing like a string of 
phosphorescent moons in the strange gloom, 
hung just below the gilded ceiling. The organ 
wheezed and groaned and there was a constant 
procession of people going in and out, as un- 
affected by th-e Bara's death agonies as if the 
shadow on the screen were only the ghost of 
a bad dream, forgotten instantly and wholly un- 
important. I wonder whether the motion pic- 
ture, in giving the public horrors as a sort of 
after-dinner relish, has not dulled our sensibili- 
ties so that we could watch a murder or a hang- 
ing or the "shooting up" of an entire town with 
no other interest except a purely soulless one in 
the photographic possibilities of the crime? We 
were driven to the movies for entertainment, 
not only because they served to drive great anxie- 
ties (such as the history of Savannah) out of 
my mind, but because there were very few 
flesh and blood players in the South. The divine 
Sarah followed us all the way down the Atlantic 
Coast, giving two one-act plays while her little 
company bore the heavier burden of acting in 
French before audiences that waited only to 
glimpse the most famous and the most heroic 

[144] 



OF THE SOUTH 

actress of her time. Cyril Maude, playing in 
"Grumpy," which I had seen on both sides of 
the ocean, appeared wherever the magnificent 
and weary Sarah had decided not to stop. I 
was profoundly sorry for both of them, for I 
could imagine the combined mental and phys- 
ical strain of travelling all day, playing an ex- 
acting role at night and, in Bernhardt's case, 
sleeping, or trying to sleep, in a private car, 
lulled by the hissing of engines, the clamour of 
bells, the shouts of trainmen and the fiendish 
clatter of baggage trucks. While we could be 
pitiful of the two distinguished strollers, we 
could not watch them play every night, and our 
schedule seemed to tally exactly. And because 
the theatre, in any form at all, is essential to our 
winter evenings, we haunted the flickering dark- 
ness of the cinema caverns, often finding igno- 
rance and vulgarity, sometimes happening upon 
the rare seed of art. 

'^Besides," Allan whispered, as soon as Theda 
Bara had been decently buried, and that divine 
mountebank Charlie had shuffled out of the 
shadows and had stirred laughter in the tiers 
of people that was like the rustle and roar of a 
rising wind, "and besides, no one likes history. 
I shouldn't think of going in for dates and all 
that sort of thing. People hate to be told any- 

[145] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

thing. Just arrange some sort of an explanation 
of my illustrations and skip lightly over Savan- 
nah." 

I nudged him fiercely. "Look at Charlie," I 
said between my teeth. "Don't tempt me." 

But we skipped lightly over Savannah the 
next day in an automobile, driving very fast 
when we came to historic ground and "just creep- 
ing" when there was nothing to learn. The orig- 
inal city laid out by General James Oglethorpe 
in 1733 is still the heart of Savannah, so that the 
view from our windows covered all of the col- 
onists' fortified settlement and the towers and 
spires of the modern city. We could see the river, 
shining like a broad band of platinum where it 
skirted the city, a river deep enough to allow 
great ships to come the eighteen miles from the 
sea to Savannah's front doorstep. The morning 
paper informed us that eight million dollars' 
worth of exports had made the "below average" 
record for the month of December, so that we 
looked down upon the beautiful city from our 
lofty windows with modern admiration for her 
thrift, her success. Like a man who has "come 
back" from ruin and disaster. Savannah has sur- 
vived the terror and the destruction of two great 
wars. During the Revolution, first the English 
and then the American troops held a line of en- 

[146] 



OF THE SOUTH 

trenchments that girdled the city like a strang- 
ling noose. During the Civil War, the Confed- 
erate trenches faced the Union trenches within 
what are to-day the city limits. Out of the bit- 
terness of defeat and the terrible period of recon- 
struction the modern Savannah has emerged, one 
of the best reasons for the commercial slogan, 
'Keep your eye on the South." 

The indescribably hoarse bell of Christ 
Church woke us to a wide panorama of this mir- 
acle, and as soon as possible after breakfast we 
set out to explore by motor what had looked so 
enticing from the fifth floor of the Hotel Savan- 
nah. The chaufifeur was a chocolate-coloured 
"boy who was so in love with his own hue that he 
had duplicated it in his clothes, achieving a 
camouflage which must have made him invisi-ble 
on the shady side of the street. He was averse 
to being polite, as if good manners were in some 
mysterious way a surrender to the superiority of 
the white race. We told him to skip lightly over 
Savannah and left him to his own devices. And 
while I cannot believe that he was being inten- 
tionally subtle when he turned out of the city 
and took us to the old Hermitage plantation, it 
is true that he let us see all that is left of the 
tragic past of his people. 

Tragic — yes, and incomparably romantic. The 
[1*7] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

approach to the Hermitage plantation is su- 
premely beautiful; melancholy because it be- 
longs to an age that is irrevocably lost, exquisite 
with the shadowy imprint of the legendary 
South, the South of magnificent distinction, 
beauty, pride, the art of living and the essence of 
good breeding. The Hermitage seemed to us the 
realisation of a literary dream, the picture of that 
vanished past which has come to be so real to us 
through the novels of Gilmore Simms, Cable, 
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mrs. Southworth, and 
the splendid stories of Miss Johnson, Winston 
Churchill, James Lane Allen, Joel Chandler 
Harris and Thomas Nelson Page — great spin- 
ners of adorable yarns, painstaking explorers in- 
to the rich fable-lore of the South, who have re- 
created the most romantic page in American his- 
tory. The Hermitage plantation at Savannah 
satisfied our longings, stirred up memories of all 
the dreams we had ever dreamed of the South, 
filled us with satisfaction, as if the chimera we 
had been pursuing all the way from New York 
were captured at last, like a rare and elusive but- 
terfly. It was all that a plantation should be. We 
spun toward the Big House along a magnificent 
avenue of live oaks that sprang from gnarled and 
twisted roots and arched overhead with the 
beautiful intricacy of Leonardo da Vinci's fres- 

[148] 









^^^ 



I 1 '''#1^^^' 





-y'^'s- 



A MAtiXIFICENT AVENUE OF LIVE OAKS 



OF THE SOUTH 

coed branches on the ceiling of the Sforza palace 
at Milan. The leaves lay one over the other, in 
an exact and bewildering pattern, shutting out 
the pale sunlight so that we ran through a tun- 
nel of green shadows — a place for fairies and 
pretty ghosts. The road was sandy and weed- 
grown, but one had only to half close one's eyes 
to vision ladies and gentlemen on horseback gal- 
loping toward the House, moving down the cool 
and leafy avenue like men and women in a Gas- 
ton La Touche canvas. One had only to shut 
away the purring of the big motor to hear the 
more beautiful sound of laughter. . . . 

There were the rows of slave huts, just as we 
had dreamed they should be, whitewashed, their 
roofs green with moss, their broad brick chim- 
neys crumbling and tipped! No spirals of 
sweet-smelling smoke rose from the cabin 
hearths, but we had only to shut our eyes to vi- 
sion the crackling pine logs lighting the single 
room of each simple dwelling, and to see the 
doorways crowded with rollicking pickaninnies. 
The sun, striking through openings in the dense 
foliage of the live oaks, fell across the road in 
bands of gold, like the light from clerestory win- 
dows. 

The chocolate chaufifeur stopped the car be- 

[149] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

fore one of the cabins and called, loudly and in- 
sistently, for some one within. 

"Molly," he cried, "come on out heah; some 
one wants to talk to you." 

We had never heard of Molly, so we were nat- 
urally curious, and as we watched the door of 
the crumbling cabin, expecting any miracle of 
such a miraculous place, an old negress emerged 
from the shadows and came slowly toward us. 
She was as bent and as gaunt as a witch, a myriad 
wrinkles puckered her black skin, she wore a 
scarlet bandana twisted around her head and 
tied with a knot in front like the tignon of Louis- 
iana. She hobbled over to us and made a feeble 
pretence at a curtsey, and then, in a cracked and 
faltering voice she wished us "good day." She 
was the oldest woman we had ever seen, older 
than any living thing on the face of the earth, 
a cinder, a handful of black dust, a prehistoric 
mummy kept alive by some invisible, smoulder- 
ing spark, a creature who had outlasted the past, 
projected into the twentieth century by some 
astounding freak of nature. 

"Who is she?" I whispered. 

"She was a slave," the chocolate chauffeur an- 
swered, lighting a cigarette. "Molly, tell us 
about the ole times — befo' the wah." 

The ancient negress shook her head and spoke 

[150] 



OF THE SOUTH 

again in her remote and quavering voice. "Ah'vc 
got a fever," she said. *'Ah'm dyin'." 

The chauffeur laughed. "She always says 
that," he explained. "Give her a qua'tah and 
she'll find her tongue." 

I held out the coin and the old woman's 
smooth, cold fingers closed over mine like a mon- 
key's paw. "How old are you?" I asked. 

"Mo'n a hundred," the chauffeur answered. 
"Ain't you, Molly? She's the oldest col'ud lady 
in Savannah. Lived right heah in this cabin for 
seventy yeahs. Ain't that right, Molly?" 

But the old woman would not answer. She 
held the quarter in the bright pink palm of her 
shrivelled hand and gazed at it fixedly like an 
ancient ape fascinated by the flash of silver. We 
drove on to the Big House, fearful lest it might 
not be as beautiful as we had dreamed it would 
be and that the magnificent avenue of oaks led 
only to disappointment. 

But the Big House, spared miraculously to 
delight the hearts of just such foolish pilgrims 
as Allan and I, brought a shout of joy from us 
both. The gardens were weed-grown, the por- 
tico and the doorway were dilapidated and de- 
cayed, the windows were dusty, the wide roof 
sagged — but it was the Big House all the same! 
Ladies in ballooning hoop skirts had lived there, 

[151] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

all the fiery heroes of "befo' the wah" literature 
had loved and fought and lived happily ever 
after in that very house, negro potentates in liv- 
ery had served wonderful dinners in the great 
dining room, and dancing masters, quaint and 
graceful, had pranced and pirouetted across the 
polished floor of the drawing room. 

While we stared at the perfect stage setting for 
the pageant of Southern romance, a howling 
mob of tattered, barefooted pickaninnies dashed 
across the ruined garden and surrounded us. 
Their rags fluttered, their indescribably round 
eyes rolled prodigiously. ''Dance fo' the gen'- 
mun," they shouted, "dance fo' the lady! Ten 
cents!" And they flapped their bare feet and 
snapped their fingers and slapped their ragged 
knees, raising a clo-ud of pumpkin-coloured dust. 
'Dance fo' the gen-mun ! Ten cents ! Tam-an-y !" 
They danced like furious dervishes with shrill 
screams, rolling their bright eyes sideways at us, 
pawing the ground. "Tam-an-y," they sang, 
grinning and gasping, "Tam-an-y!" 

Allan tossed a quarter to them and they fell 
on it in a tangled, writhing heap, the pink soles 
of their bare feet waving in the air, their faces 
buried in the dust. A young woman with a baby 
in her arms, who had followed them, shifted 
her corn-cob pipe long enough to ask us for 

[152] 



OF THE SOUTH 

money, and I shall never forget the strangeness 
of the tiny, black baby hand that closed over my 
fingers and the pennies. "At least," I thought, 
"you were not born in slavery, you poor little 
baby." But there were tears in my eyes. The 
ragged heap on the ground disentangled itself 
and became ten shrieking pickaninnies again. 
"Dance fo' the gen-mun," they began, bursting 

into song, "dance fo' the lady " 

But the chocolate chauffeur, apparently dis- 
gusted, turned the car away and hurried back 
through the avenue of oaks to Savannah, cover- 
ing the five miles as quickly as the law allows 
because he wanted us to see the new negro quar- 
ter of Savannah, rows and rows of neat frame 
and brick houses that have taken the place of 
the one-room cabins of ante-bellum days. He 
wanted us to see what freedom and ambition 
have done for him and for others like him. He 
was ridiculously proud of young negresses in 
white shoes, and tipped his hat to them as we 
passed; he ran slowly through the narrow streets 
of the quarter so that we might see pickaninnies, 
in sailor suits and socks, riding Kiddy-Kars 
along the sidewalks. . , . For how could he 
have known that rags are picturesque, that songs 
touch the heart, that simplicity is lovable, that 
the martyrdom of his race had touched our imag- 

[153] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

ination as its progress In neat houses, white shoes 
and Kiddy- Kars never will? We forgave him 
everything, for we realised suddenly that we 
were wrong and that the chocolate chauffeur was 
right. We had been demanding an eternal rag- 
gedness and poverty and picturesque ignorance 
for our own purely aesthetic enjoyment. Prog- 
ress is not beautiful in its material aspect unless 
we realise the urge of the spirit behind it, the 
imperceptible but powerful lift of the ugly 
sprout, pushing its way through dingy mud to- 
ward the imperishable light of realisation. 

We skipped over the rest of Savannah, very 
humble in spirit, finding at every turn of the 
wheel that the impassioned hat-clerk in Charles- 
ton was right about the parks. Savannah was 
given the wrong^^nickname, for City of Packs 
would fit her more exactly, to-day at least, than 
Forest City. A whole series of squares and lit- 
tle greens, running from the river southward 
through the city, is the chain upon which Savan- 
nah has strung her most beautiful buildings, 
clubs, residences and monuments. We counted 
each bead on this long rosary of loveliness, dis- 
covering that Savannah is not the sort of city 
that pays cash for its fireworks and dodges its 
taxes. Savannah dips down into her capacious 

[154] 



OF THE SOUTH 

and bulging pocketbook and spends money lav- 
ishly to beautify herself. 

At the Bonaventure Cemetery, just outside the 
city, we saw Spanish moss swinging from great 
trees in long, silver-grey streamers that brushed 
against our faces as we drove up and down the 
broad avenues. It was infinitely soft to the touch, 
like a fine seaweed, and swayed rhythmically in 
every pufif of wind. I cannot tell you why these 
enormous streamers should have seemed beauti- 
ful to us when the strangling growth had every- 
where else been repulsive and disfiguring in our 
eyes. Perhaps the very luxuriance of the growth, 
the prodigious festoons, endeared those particu- 
lar avenues of moss-draped oaks to us. People 
moved about among the swaying pennants, ap- 
pearing and disappearing like dancers seen 
against same forest background by Gordon 
Craig, a fantastic stage setting of the modern 
school. 

We were supposed to catch a train that left 
Savannah for Jacksonville at twenty minutes af- 
ter two, so we hurried through the ceremony of 
"checking" the Golf Club, the Yacht Club, the 
giant skeleton structure of the new Georgia Ho- 
tel, a few geometric suburbs blossoming with 
red-roofed villas arni avenues of palms like 
forced gardens producing orchids out of the des- 

[155] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

ert sands, and hurried back to the hotel, con- 
vinced, in a confused way, that Savannah is rich 
and jolly, fond of sport, up-to-date, hospitable, 
self-sufficient and alert. Like all other cities, 
she hides her fashionable face from the gaze of 
tourists. Elegance rides in a motor or sits snugly 
behind the plate glass windows of a club or dines 
discreetly at home. Fashion speaks the same 
language the world over, in Paris, Cairo, Vien- 
na, London, New York and — Savannah. 

The train to Jacksonville left at five forty-five 
— the weather obstinately interfering with sched- 
ules — and it was not until very late that evening 
that we found ourselves in ^'Jax," the affectionate 
diminutive of an afifectionate population for the 
gay city on the banks of the St. John's River. 
We found ourselves in an atmosphere of pea- 
soup fog, Florida tourists and a mysteriously 
;transplanted Broadway, for all of theatrical 
New York had apparently answered the resist- 
less call of the Jacksonville motion picture stu- 
dios. We dined in the midst of a conflagration 
of stars, a glittering constellation of personali- 
ties. The Lambs' Club promenaded the lobby 
of the hotel while we sat in an obscure corner 
and did mental multiplication tables of their 
combined salaries. 

I was very tired. I stared in pathetic wonder 

[156] 



OF THE SOUTH 

at the beautiful actresses who contrived to look 
so rested. 

"Did I skip too lightly over Savannah?" I 
asked, fearful of the answer before I was half- 
way through the question. 

Allan, with his eyes fixed on Madame Petrova 
as she swayed (actresses always do sway, don't 
they?) down the lobby, answered positively, 
''We saw everything there was to see." 

"I wonder," I vs^ispered. Then I added in a 
savage voice, "I wish I were an actress." 

I went to bed haunted by my inefficiency and 
a growing determination to "study up" Savan- 
nah as soon as I got back to New York. I re- 
membered having seen Sherman's headquarters 
in Madison Square — what had he to do with 
Savannah? "Sherman's March to the Sea" ran 
through my mind like the refrain of a popular 
song, but I could not remember the way of his 
marching. My dreams were of Madame Pet- 
rova founding a colony on the Savannah River 
in 1733 and naming it Oglethorpe after the hero 
of the play. . . . 



[157] 




CHAPTER VII 

AN AFTERNOON IN OLD ST. AUGUSTINE AND A 
CHRONICLE OF TIRE TROUBLE 

DO not know why there should be a 
mysterious affinity between long, 
black moustaches and yachting-caps, 
but it is true that men who wear the 
one inevitably affect the other. We encountered 
the combination on the morning of our last day 
in Jacksonville. The fellow had a motor that 
he was willing to rent to any one who was foolish 
enough to rent it from him, and he captured us 
on the very doorstep of our hotel. 

We had started out immediately after break- 
fast, lured by a growing determination to visit 
St. Augustine whether it rained or not, and be- 
cause the newspapers had invited us, every day 
for a week, to cross the river. "Take your fairy 
across the ferry" was Jax's morning reminder 
that Spanish St. Augustine, the crumbling and 
dreamy old-world city, could be reached in an 
hour or two by motor. 

Everything conspired to our miserable down- 

[158] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

fall. "Mr. Foster's" amanuensis was hemmed 
in by tourists when we approached her desk, 
and we did not wait to ask questions about St. 
Augustine because she was in the middle of a 
detailed explanation, patiently given to an in- 
attentive old lady, of how one goes from Jack- 
sonville to El Paso in the quickest possible time. 
When we turned away the old lady was saying, 
in a positive tone, "Now, tell me how to get 
from Jacksonville to Portsmouth, New Hamp- 
shire." We knew that "Mr. Foster's" human 
time-table was quite likely to be creating sched- 
ules for the old lady until noon. So we had wan- 
dered out of doors, hoping to fall on some easy 
way to get to St. Augustine, and had fallen, on 
the very doorstep, upon the gentleman of the 
mustachios and the yachting-cap. His motor 
was for hire. He offered it, with the driver, for 
a ridiculously low price. He waylaid us, hesi- 
tating in the doorway, scented our uncertainty, 
divined our desire, and with a few dramatic and 
misleading words, he visualised a trip to St. 
Augustine, in his motor, which would be the 
crowning experience (I am using his phrase) 
of our Floridian days. 

He looked like a rural interpretation of the 
villain in melodrama; his dyed moustaches 
drooped fiercely, his yachting-cap was vaguely 

[159] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

distinguished, his watch chain glittered. And 
we were charmed. Finally, of course, like hyp- 
notised rabbits, we stepped into the car and 
agreed to pay the fellow's price. He whisked 
away the "Car for Hire" sign which adorned 
the tonneau, waved his long, white hand, bowed 
to us, and before we had had time to look at our 
bargain we had rattled briskly up the street on 
the way to St. Augustine. 

The sun had come out tentatively, not as if 
it wished to really gladden the hearts of the 
sneezing, grippe-convalescent Northern hordes 
seeking warmth in Florida, but rather as if it 
were trying its hand at Spring weather and not 
quite succeeding. There were gusts of sharp 
wind and spatters of rain, varied now and then 
by whole half-hours of calm and sunny beauty 
when even the fruit trees might have been fooled 
into blooming before the next spilling cloud 
nipped the ambitious buds. When the sun shone 
at all it shone magnificently. The sky cleared 
like magic, the puddles dried and the whole 
countryside was fragrant with the peculiar sweet- 
ness of a freshly-washed world. We stopped 
at each burst of hot sunlight and lowered the 
top of the car, only to be caught in another flurry 
of rain before we were fairly on our way again. 
Finally we gave up trying to protect ourselves 

[160] 



OF THE SOUTH 

and rode uncovered through sun and rain alike. 

The ferry crossing was enlivened by a ear- 
ful of movie-players in sulphurish make-up who 
were on their way to some "location" across the 
river. I think they enjoyed our curiosity fully 
as much as we enjoyed their nearness; movie- 
players have so few flesh and blood audiences, 
and I don't suppose that they differ from the 
other sort of player in that they like to be ad- 
mired. 

The road to St. Augustine is for the most part 
made of brick; it is laid as neatly and as exactly 
as a garden path, a warm red in colour, not in- 
harmonious with the landscape but certainly not 
as beautiful as the white-shell-road. We had 
soon passed the forlorn and undignified suburbs 
of Jacksonville and could run more quickly. 
That is, we started out by running quickly. The 
rural villain's motor was a 1900 model ; it rattled 
loosely as if it were made principally of tin and 
chains. Behind the young driver's back, Allan 
and I exchanged furious glances. I blamed him 
for the bargain, he blamed me for not having 
saved him from it. But we sat in silence, a si- 
lence full of tense control, and listened to the 
grunts, the spittings, the spasmodic and hyster- 
ical explosions of the motor. The brick road 

[161] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

acted as a sounding-board and increased the rat- 
tlings and reverberations to a perfect fury of 
noise. We would have been greeted and shamedi 
by small boy hoots of "Ice wagon!" in the 
North. But small boys in the South are too 
polite to notice a vehicle as repulsive as ours. 
"I told you so" trembled in the air. 

For a mile or so the car went forward gin- 
gerly like an ancient clock making a final effort 
to round ofif an hour before breaking down. And 
the driver, who was profoundly ashamed of the 
whole transaction, urged the wheezing motor up 
to forty-five and put off the inevitable disgrace 
by letting us believe that we would be in St. 
Augustine in time for lunch. 

The way led through sandy country over- 
grown with palmetto scrub or tall, spindling 
pines. The scrub was ornamental but the pines 
had been slashed and hideously scarred in the 
interests of the turpentine industry. Each one 
wore a tin cup, like a blind beggar. Set well 
back from the road there were ramshackle cot- 
tages, negro shanties, where an effort had been 
made to lure a few vegetables and flowers from 
the sandy soil. But the scrub and the pine dom- 
inated the landscape, as they had done all the 
way from North Carolina, through South Caro- 
lina, Georgia and into Florida. The sameness 

[162] 



OF THE SOUTH 

of the Southern landscape creates a feeling of 
drowsiness in me; everything is grey-green or 
silver-grey — a procession of two tones that fi- 
nally lulls me to sleep. If one comes from the 
more colourful and varied North, one has to ad- 
just one's sense of beauty to the neutral quality 
of the Southern landscape. I remember that 
when I used to leave the Austrian Tyrol in the 
autumn and go down into Italy, I had to adjust 
my eyes to the cindery grey of the upper Apen- 
nines and teach myself not to underestimate the 
beauty of the volcanic slopes above Pistoja be- 
cause I had learned to love the glorious vitality, 
the rich greenness, the hardy pine growth of 
Karnten. The American South has a sunny and 
gentle beauty of its own, a delicacy of colour, 
an endearing and elusive charm. The unique 
appeal of the country lies rather in its small cit- 
ies and in the wide stretches of sparsely settled 
land than in the featureless ugliness of its large 
modern cities. 

The South is romantic, and its romance is both 
historical and climatic. There is a gentleness in 
its skies, a softness in the landscape, a leisurely, 
unkempt grace and fascination in its gardens. 
The tragedy of the past rests lightly on the 
South; now and then one happens upon wist- 
ful reminders of a dead and gone magnificence 

[163] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

— a crumbling plantation house, a weedy gar- 
den, a stately mansion given over to official uses 
or sunken into poverty and decay. But while 
its beauty is reminiscent, the South is not melan- 
choly. The love of it deepens in one as the 
Spring advances. With the slow flowering of 
the fruit trees, the fresh putting out of bright 
new leaves against the polished and thickly clus- 
tered foliage of the oaks, with the blossoming 
of violets, climbing honeysuckle, jessamine, dog- 
wood and starry Cherokee roses, with the com- 
ing of camellias and magnolias, with the deep- 
ening warmth of the fragrant days your affec- 
tions are ensnared, you linger, and in the end 
the drowsy South holds its own against the virile 
and boisterous North. 

''Bang!" 

"It's a tire," the driver explained. 

We stopped while he repaired the damage, 
and we got out to "shake a leg" over a quarter of 
a mile of the John Anderson Brick Highway. 
There was nothing to sketch but a very shabby 
cow who was lipping at the stiff grass on the 
side of the road, so Allan photographed me 
standing by the car, standing in the car, seated 
magnificently in the tonneau and staring off at 
Florida, helping the driver, not helping the dri- 
ver, and posed nonchalantly near the cow. The 

[164] 



OF THE SOUTH 

driver laboured, his face scarlet with humilia- 
tion. He knelt in the road with streams of per- 
spiration dripping off the end of his nose. I 
have never seen a man who perspired more reck- 
lessly or more completely. I pitied him, sitting 
coolly in the lofty tin automobile. 

"There," he said, pausing for the first time 
to mop his streaming face, "that one's fixed. 
Now we'll try to get into St. Augustine on the 
others." 

"What do you mean?" 

"Them tires," he explained, "is rotten." 

Rotten! We went on a few miles further. 
The sun came out and scorched the brick road 
and beat on the tops of our heads. Bang! This 
time we had to have a new inner tube. The dri- 
ver descended, a whole kitful of tools was spread 
up and down the road, the car was jacked up, 
the wheel came off, the driver began to perspire 
again. An hour passed. Other cars rolled 
smoothly by on the way to St. Augustine, blow- 
ing up clouds of dust that settled slowly down 
on us. A puddle formed under the driver's nose. 
The inner tube behaved like a jack-in-the-box, 
and leaped out of the casing at one end while 
the driver and Allan squeezed it in at the other. 
The iron rim, in some inexplicable manner, had 
expanded, and no human power could make the 

[165] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

tire fit it again. We hammered, we tugged. The 
driver gave gallons of perspiration to the task. 
I v^andered away into a pine thicket to let pro- 
fanity help the situation. Another hour passed. 
And all the while, cool carfuls of fashionable, 
veiled ladies shot past on their way to St. Augus- 
tine and lunch. I came back pitifully to ex- 
plain that all my life I had longed to see St. 
Augustine, that it was the city of my dreams; 
I said that I was going to Tampa on the mor- 
row (''on the morrow" suited my state of mind 
much better than an undramatic "to-morrow") 
and that I was being subjected to an unmerited 
humiliation. 

The driver looked up at me through a maze 
of moisture and explained that he was doing his 
best. Between us we eventually stuffed the live- 
ly inner tube into the tire and fitted the tire it- 
self over the mysterious elastic iron rim. Then 
we started out again, and because all three of 
us were young we wiped out the memory of the 
wasted two hours and spoke buoyantly of lunch. 

Bang! 

But this time it didn't really matter. We were 
at the gates of Spanish St. Augustine. We sent 
the humiliated driver and the tin automobile 
ahead in search of a garage and, God willing, 
convalescence, while we passed through the fa- 

[166] 



^•i^-^v 






■V 



17'^' 



II- 



wa*-^' 







THE SPANIARDS CALLED THEIR FORT TEiE CASTLE SAX 

NLARCO 



OF THE SOUTH 

mous old gates on foot. Lunch could wait, for 
here was beauty. I cannot imagine a nobler 
portal to romance and antiquity. Directly be- 
yond, facing the wide blue of Matanzas Bay, the 
great fort lay across our path. Behind us, Jack- 
sonville and the Twentieth Century, noise, ugli- 
ness and the commonplace — 

We crossed the wide green to the fort, and 
not waiting to examine the wide moat or the 
dungeons, went at once to the terreplein where 
we could see the whole magnificent sweep of 
white beaches and dunes, the marshlands, the 
Bay, Anastasia Island with its curious, Christ- 
mas-candy lighthouse, and the roofs and towers 
of St. Augustine. 

The fortress rises superbly in the centre of a 
broad open space and it is near the sea, so that 
its massive coquina walls are stained by storm 
and wind with all the pearly opalescence of an 
oyster shell. It is woefully misnamed Fort Ma- 
rion after a Revolutionary general who had noth- 
ing to do, as far as I could discover, with the 
history of the fortress. The Spaniards, who 
ruled St. Augustine uninterruptedly (save for a 
twenty years' British occupation) from 1565 un- 
til 1821, called their fort the Castle San Marco. 
And San Marco it should be to-day; the softer 

[167] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

Latin name suits the essentially Spanish pile as 
its patriotic misnomer never could. 

Although Ponce de Leon landed near St. Au- 
gustine in 15 13 and was inspired to name his 
discovery Florida, he did not find the fountain 
of youth he had set out for, and returned to Spain 
without having established a colony. The 
Huguenots came next, seeking refuge from reli- 
gious persecution in what must have seemed to 
them a problematical world, a mirage; they 
crossed the ocean in two ships under Captain 
Jean Ribaut and landed not far from St. Au- 
gustine on what proved to be very tangible 
ground. But Ribaut had to go back to France 
for a larger company and for supplies; he sailed 
away, leaving twenty-five of his men in Florida 
to hold the beautiful mirage in the name of God 
and France. 

The twenty-five held on until their provisions 
had given out, until hope had died, until their 
beautiful mirage seemed only a hateful and atro- 
cious prison. For Ribaut did not return. He 
was in France trying to raise money, a feat that 
was as hard to accomplish in 1563 as it is now, 
when rich citizens clap their hands over their 
purses at the mere approach of an idealist. Ri- 
baut begged while the twenty-five stranded Hu- 
guenots starved in Florida. And finally, when 

[168] 



OF THE SOUTH 

they had given up all hope of him, they tried to 
cross the ocean in a fragile cockleshell of their 
own construction. At sea their supplies gave 
out altogether and the desperate Huguenots 
faced a hideous problem. They cast lots — and 
the gruesome game was played with who knows 
what deadly seriousness or atrocious playfulness 
■ — for the life of one man who should sacrifice 
himself for the others. One of the twenty-five 
lost and gave himself in an appalling martyr- 
dom. The rest were rescued by an English 
ship and played no further part in St. Augus- 
tine's history. 

De Laudonniere, another Huguenot of vast 
courage and superb credulity, landed in St. Aug- 
ustine the following year. He did not settle 
there, but with the help of friendly Indians built 
a fort on the James River. The tardy Ribaut 
arrived in time to reinforce De Laudonniere, 
and St. Augustine and its vicinity might have 
become Huguenot if Philip H of Spain had not 
chanced to hear that the little band of heretics 
had settled themselves in Florida, thereby en- 
croaching on Spanish North America and de- 
filing a Catholic hemisphere. 

Pedro Menendez de Avilas was sent on the 
pious mission of destruction. He so burned to 
destroy the detested Lutherans that he spent his 

[169] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

entire fortune in equipping an expedition of two 
thousand six hundred people. Nor did he for- 
get to include in his company twenty-six priests 
who were to save the soul of any Huguenot who 
might repent or who might remember, in his ex- 
treme moment, that he belonged to the old faith. 
Bloodshed and salvation, cruelty and religion, 
the most ferocious hatred and the most exalted 
fanaticism brought the first permanent settlers 
to America fifty-five years before the Pilgrims 
set foot on Plymouth Rock. The Spaniards es- 
tablished themselves at St. Augustine and turned 
their attention immediately to the extermination 
of the Huguenots. Ribaut, who attempted to re- 
taliate from the sea, was shipwrecked, and Lau- 
donniere with the few survivors of the James 
River colony fled back to France. 

Ribaut's shipwrecked crew surrendered to the 
mercy of Menendez. They would better have 
taken refuge with the Indians for the conscien- 
tious Hidalgo had no pity, although there was 
perhaps a shadow of gentlemanly consideration 
in his soul. He had his miserable captives led 
out of sight of their comrades with bound hands. 
And then he had them stabbed, ten at a time, in 
the back. Two hundred died the first day; the 
rest, one hundred and fifty, in batches of ten 
were stabbed with true mediaeval courtesy on the 

[170] 



OF THE SOUTH 

following day. Nor "by the grace of God" did 
iRibaut escape. 

Apparently Menendez had no quarrel with 
his victims, but insisted that he had killed them, 
"not as Frenchmen but as Lutherans," as if blot- 
ting out a Huguenot soul was as unimportant as 
stepping on a beetle. The white sands of St. 
Augustine were consecrated by the blood of the 
heroic Frenchmen who had surrendered them- 
selves in all good faith to a "merciful" enemy. 
They were avenged three years later by De 
Gourges, who captured one of Menendez' gar- 
risons when the Spaniard was away and hanged 
the defenders to the very trees where so many 
Huguenots had swung. He was a complete 
avenger with a nice sense of humour, for he 
placarded the hanged Spaniards with a neat 
parody on Menendez' apology: "I do this not 
as unto Spaniards, nor as outcasts, but as traitors, 
thieves and murderers." The confusion of the 
grammar detracted nothing from the straightfor- 
wardness of De Gourges' intentions; he was pos- 
sibly overwrought when he penned the thrust. 
But Menendez saw, and while he parsed the jest 
he reviewed his own soul. He established mis- 
sions as far north as Chesapeake Bay and as far 
south as Cape Florida, and then feeling that his 
military and spiritual duty had been done, he 

[171] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

returned to Spain. To console you, in case you 
feel that De Gourges' vengeance lacked com- 
pleteness, I will write Menendez' epitaph. He 
died of a fever, when only fifty years of age, 
"somewhere in Spain." 

He had at least won Florida for Spain with 
comparatively little bloodshed. When one 
thinks what Alsace and Lorraine have cost 
France, what the winning back of the Trentino 
has cost Italy, the murder of a handful of 
Huguenots seems a merciful matter. St. Augus- 
tine remained under Spanish rule for nearly 
three centuries. The history of the place was 
lively enough to have satisfied the most ad- 
venture-loving settlers of those adventurous 
days. There were massacres, Indian raids, 
fights with buccaneers and raiders, bitter 
quarrels with the English settlers of the Caro- 
linas. And all the while, in spite of the 
reluctance of the kings of Spain to send funds 
for the building of a fort which cost thirty mil- 
lion dollars, San Marco rose stone by stone on 
the outskirts of St. Augustine. Slaves and In- 
dian prisoners did the greatest part of the work, 
carrying the blocks of coquina from the quar- 
ries, two miles below Anastasia lighthouse, to 
the bay, where they were loaded on barges and 
ferried across to the Castle. The fortress was 

[172] 



OF THE SOUTH 

begun in 1665, but it was not until 1765 that the 
Spanish coat-of-arms was finally placed over the 
great entrance together with the inscription in 
Spanish which says that ^'Don Fernandez the 
Sixth being King of Spain, and Field Marshal 
Don Alonzo Fernandez de Herreda Governor 
and Captain-General of the city of St. Augus- 
tine, Florida, and its province, this fortress was 
finished in the year 1765. The works were di- 
rected by the Captain-Engineer, Don Pedro de 
Brazas y Garay." 

Long before Don Pedro de Brazas y Garay 
took the glory of the building for himself, San 
Marco had had its baptism of fire. Governor 
Moore of Carolina had made no impression on 
its massive walls, but he had succeeded in hold- 
ing the inhabitants of St. Augustine barricaded 
in the fortress for three months. Thirteen years 
later Governor Oglethorpe came down from 
Carolina and threw one hundred and fifty shells 
into the fort and the town. He might have suc- 
ceeded in starving out the besieged Spaniards 
if he had not been driven away by clouds of poi- 
sonous mosquitoes. His bitten and outraged sol- 
diers refused to endure the humiliating torment 
and Oglethorpe had to return empty-handed to 
Carolina. 

During the British occupation, St. Augustine, 
[173] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

which had been nothing but a military post, be- 
came an active seaport, and there was a lively 
coming and going of schooners and square-rig- 
gers in the broad, beach-fringed bay. Ships 
from London and Liverpool, New York and 
Charleston put in at St. Augustine with supplies ; 
some of them brought negro slaves. They set 
sail again with full cargoes of indigo and naval 
stores. To-day there are no traces of this ac- 
tivity. Matanzas Bay is a gentle sheet of water, 
ideal for the leisurely houseboat or for an oc- 
casional pleasure steamer bearing tourists to St. 
Augustine from Jacksonville, or from St. Aug- 
ustine to the bathing-beaches of the more north- 
ern shore. Where the great square-rigged ships 
rode magnificently there are now noisy, explos- 
ive launches skimming back and forth, cutting 
a threadlike wake across the polished surface of 
the water. 

At the close of the Revolution England ceded 
the valuable province back to Spain, but it is 
not known how many of the Spaniards who had 
fled British dominion returned to St. Augustine. 
The town had not fully taken on its Spanish im- 
print when the United States paid five million 
dollars for Florida and got themselves in for a 
trouble which had been brewing for years — 
the Seminole War. 

[174] 



OF THE SOUTH 

We wondered, looking down the steep sides 
of San Marco, how it could have withstood its 
past, solid and impregnable as it is. The sentry- 
boxes and the watch-tower are still standing, and 
the combined efforts of all the besiegers have 
only succeeded in peppering the thick walls. 
Yet I suppose that one shell dropped into San 
Marco from a modern warship would powder 
its mediaeval curtains, those "curtains and bas- 
tions made of solid silver" which swallowed up 
so many galleon loads of Spanish riches, into a 
scattered and obliterated dust-heap. The cen- 
tury of toil, the long procession of negroes and 
captive Indians bearing coquina blocks, have 
built a seventh wonder of the New World, a 
tourist treasure house where home-towners, with 
their wives and their daughters, come to gape 
at an architecture which is beyond their under- 
standing, and to be touched, perhaps for the first 
time, by a beauty which is both romantic and 
historical. 

Tribes of desperate tourists, generaled by a 
guide, pursued us around the terreplein and fi- 
nally drove me headlong into the watch-tower. 
I fled upwards in a spiral and was knocked on 
top of my head by a cross-beam which drove my 
hat over my ears and deprived me of sight, hear- 
ing and the power of speech. So that when the 

[175] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

tourist horde arrived, instead of being in ex- 
clusive and aristocratic possession of the watch- 
tower, I was sitting in a dazed state half-way 
up the staircase, brushing stars out of my eyes. 

They clustered about me while their guide 
explained the watch-tower, like the fellow in 
Madame Tussaud's Wax Works, with a total 
disregard for punctuation. I assumed the part 
of a scalped settler — done in wax — and escaped 
attention. The guide explained in a nasal voice, 
acute and toneless, with erratic pauses for 
breath : 

"The fort has four nearly equal bastions 
known as St. Peter, St. Paul, St. Augustine and 
St. Charles and four (pause for breath) con- 
necting walls called curtains ladies and gentle- 
men you will kindly notice that there are sentry 
towers on three of the (pause for breath) bas- 
tions while you are now looking at a tower which 
commands a view of both land and sea." He 
might have added, "also of a young woman who 
has banged her head on a cross-beam and is in a 
state of semi-consciousness," but he didn't. He 
went on, with a dramatic gesture and no 
commas : "The walls are twelve feet thick at the 
base nine at the top and twenty-five feet high 
ladies and gentlemen you will (pause for breath) 
now follow me and I will lead you into the inner 

[176] 



OF THE SOUTH 

court or plaza which is one hundred feet square." 
The home-towners, with a blank expression, 
turned as one man and trotted at his heels. 

"That fellow knows a lot," Allan remarked 
with admiration and respect. "I'm going to fol- 
low him. That's an easy way to get history." 

He had joined the home-towners before I 
could protest, and I had to reel in pursuit down 
the steep ramp (which I vaguely remembered 
as having been used as the background for count- 
less movie dramas and where I had seen my 
favourite hero fight a magnificent duel) , down to 
the plaza and into the cool darkness of the dun- 
geon. Through all that maze of passageways, 
court rooms, council chambers and casemates 
there is an intoxicating odour of antiquity, a 
delicious combining of crumbling stone and 
musty, sunbaked walls, an odour of mould that 
is like the ghost of incense and old books. It 
took me by the nose and by the soul, that rare 
sweet smell of ancient wood and ancient stone, 
the faintly aromatic dust of centuries. Outside, 
the sanded courtyard of the fortress blazed like 
a mirror in the hot, white sunlight, little knots 
of tourists crossing and recrossing it kicking 
up spirals of dust. It must have looked the same 
to Osceola when he was confined in the court- 
room after his capture by General Hernandez. 

[177] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

He carved shallow niches in the coquina walls 
of his prison so that he could lift himself up to 
the grating and stare out at the patch of sun- 
flooded courtyard that was all he could see of the 
world. The guide's voice echoed around the 
room where the great Chief spent nearly a year, 
while the home-towners gaped at the pathetic 
niches or scratched furtive signatures on the 
walls, wanting, for some obscure and inexpli- 
cable reason, to associate themselves with the 
tragic and heroic dead. 

The story of Osceola is bitter and humiliating 
in perspective. The Seminoles, like so many 
of the Indian nations of North America, inter- 
fered with the white settlers' scheme of things. 
It was suggested that they move south of the 
Withlacooche or west of the Mississippi ; there 
were threatenings and cruelties, deceptions and 
treaties which bore a pathetic resemblance to a 
certain famous "scrap of paper." If the Semi- 
noles could have been erased from the face of 
the earth, the Americans would have wiped the 
slate clean with a clear conscience. But it is 
not easy to dispose of five thousand people, hard- 
er still to deprive them of their hereditary farm- 
lands, their homes and their hunting grounds. 
The inevitable war began with the massacre 
of Major Dade's men and lasted for seven years. 

[178] 



OF THE SOUTH 

Osceola was the Petain of the Seminoles, a fear- 
less, expert, keenly intelligent chief, a danger- 
ous enemy and a man of extraordinary honesty. 
The story of his capture makes bitter reading 
and I will not repeat it here. I would like to 
believe that it was the only instance in American 
history of the violation of a truce, and that when 
General Jessup and General Hernandez cap- 
tured the unarmed and unsuspecting chief they 
were influenced in some nameless and inexpli- 
cable way by the tragic atmosphere of San Mar- 
co; I would like to believe that their spirits were 
tinged by an alien treachery, changed mysteri- 
ously, inbued with the hates, the deceits, the in- 
stabilities, of a mediaeval and Latin past. 

Osceola was taken seven miles from St. Aug- 
ustine and was imprisoned in San Marco with 
two other Seminoles, King Philip's son Coa- 
choochee and Hadjo the medicine man. Coa- 
choochee and Hadjo dug niches in the steep 
walls of the court-room and climbed eighteen 
feet to the ventilator, where they somehow man- 
aged to squeeze through the iron bars and 
drop into the moat. Coachoochee had torn 
his blankets into strips and was able to break his 
fall by sliding down the improvised rope; but 
Hadjo tumbled twenty-five feet into the moat, 
landing like a cat, apparently, on his feet. He 

[179] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

escaped, and history says nothing of his bruises. 

Osceola stayed, strangely steadfast considering 
the manner of his capture. Of his people, only 
a few hundred remained, and his own martyr- 
dom lasted scarcely a year. The guide, point- 
ing to a hideous painted effigy of the great Semi- 
nole, swung into a comma-less eulogy delivered 
at top speed, as if he were afraid that the inner 
workings of his speechmaking were on the verge 
of breaking down. And all the while his eye ap- 
praised the home-towners, his attentive ear heard 
the tentative clinkings of quarters and dimes. 
... I felt as ashamed as if the unhappy ghost 
were hovering over my head, appraising my vul- 
gar curiosity, the blank stares of the home-town- 
ers, the weariness of the guide. . „ . I fled, leav- 
ing Allan to pay, not for elemosine, but for punc- 
tuation. 

Lunch lay somewhere in the centre of the 
town, over by that cluster of Andalusian towers 
and roofs which rose above the simple one and 
two-storied houses of the residential and business 
quarters like the high-flung, scarlet peaks of the 
Certosa di Pavia. An ancient darkey, encount- 
ered on the green before San Marco, pointed out 
the way. He had "lucky beans" for sale in ex- 
change for information, which seemed to me a 
polite and supremely well-bred way to earn a 

[180] 



OF THE SOUTH 

living. You simply get in the way of confused 
strangers, put them on the right path, and then 
suggest in a winsome voice that a lucky bean, 
worn in the sole of the shoe, is a counter-irritant 
for blue devils. If the confused stranger hap- 
pens to be a sport, and a surprising number of 
people are, he falls for the bean — and the infor- 
mation. (Wallingford please notice!) This is 
better stuff than blind and dumb beggary, far, 
far better stuff than the antics of the postcard 
pest; it smacks of honesty and good breeding. 
Allan bought two beans, and feeling that the 
war ought to encourage thrift, I asked another 
question. 

"Where is the fountain of youth. Uncle?" 

The ancient darkey was no more certain of 
the life-giving spring than poor Ponce de Leon 
had been. He scratched his head and answered 
sadly, "Ah disremember." 

"Why, you ought to know," I said, and he 
beamed at the compliment. 

"Ah disremember," he insisted. "Ah never 
can seem to recollect whichever fountain it is. 
Seems like it moves. Yes, m'am, it moves ! When 
Ah was a I'il boy it was over yonder. Nex' time 
Ah come to look fob it, it was down yonder. 
And now Ah've disremembered where they've 

[181] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

done put it. Yessah, that fountain of youth don' 
stay whar it belongs mo'n a yeah at a time." 

Allan whispered fiercely in my ear, as fiercely 
as it is possible to whisper, "Don't ask him an- 
other question. I haven't any change!" 

So I fell into the historical habit and aban- 
doned the quest. It doesn't matter about youth, 
anyway, when one is young. It is only after- 
ward, when the precious gift is lost, that one 
would like to find the crystal source and drink 
long and deep. If we could only have youth 
after age! Youth is so often tragic in its igno- 
rance, its profligacy, its unawareness, if I can 
put it that way ! I've often wished that the whole 
scheme of things could be reversed ; that we 
could be born old, wise, disciplined, weary, 
rheumatic and world-seasoned, and that we 
could pass with the years into a glorious, con- 
scious youth. My idea of heaven is not com- 
plex — we shall be old-young, we shall walk with 
the free gait of children, we shall leap and rol- 
lick, climb and prance; we shall be sturdy, beau- 
tiful and invincibly unafraid, and we shall be as 
old as the old world. 

St. Augustine has learned the secret of young 
old age. The crumbling walls of the unpreten- 
tious houses are stained ochre and blue and rose 
after the Latin fashion so prevalent in Spain and 

[182] 



OF THE SOUTH 

in Southern Italy; the doors open out directly 
on the street and invite friendliness; there are 
pleasant gardens, sometimes set behind walls 
and not seldom blooming in the very dooryards 
or brightening a business street with staccato 
poinsettias and flowering bushes. Wherever the 
disastrous fire of I9i4has spared the wooden and 
coquina houses of the old Spanish period, there 
are delightful jutting balconies shadowed by 
steeply sloping roofs and often hung with big- 
nonia vines or thick curtains of ivy. The town 
is sparsely built over a wide area in the leisurely 
manner of the past, and even the intrusion of 
modern "villas" and frame houses designed to 
meet the home-towners' "rooming" needs has 
failed to spoil the beauty of the narrow streets. 

St. Augustine has fallen into a gentle and 
wholly delightful shabbiness since the passing of 
its climax of prosperity. The "Great Freeze" 
drove the more fashionable Northerners further 
south, to the gay, made-to-order resorts. Palm 
Beach and Miami, where they are willing to de- 
posit a "guarantee" of their spending capacity 
in exchange for the dubious pleasure of paying 
four times what everything they buy is really 
worth. St. Augustine has been left on the fringe 
of the fashionable tide of Southern travel; its 
great hotels catch eddies of the stream early in 

[183] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

the season, when a few travellers break the long 
journey there; and again in the spring the re- 
turning rush drifts in and around the old Span- 
ish town before it finally faces North again. Bui: 
it is no longer chic to take a house in St. Augus- 
tine for the entire season. Fashion pursued the 
fox-trot, the Hawaiian orchestra, the high cost 
of living and publicity to a warmer climate, and 
left St. Augustine to drift year by year into a lov- 
able seediness, an endearing informality, so that 
it has become itself again after a period of ex- 
citement and ostentation. The greatest number 
of its winter visitors are from the Middle West. 
They are not fashionable and they are easily 
amused. St. Augustine can be herself with them ; 
she does not have to make her sandy, meandering 
driveways into boulevards or trim her neglected 
gardens or go into business or pretend to be a 
modern city. The home-towners are a comfort- 
able lot, not over-imaginative; they will never 
notice that St. Augustine is getting to be a little 
out of style and that Flagler's second sweetheart, 
Palm Beach (the hussy!) , has walked away with 
most of her admirers. The home-towner loves 
St. Augustine. 

We encountered him all the way across St. 
George Street, sauntering in the warm sunlight 
(for the sun had come out for good) with his 

[184] 



OF THE SOUTH 

home-town paper in his pocket and an air of 
purposeful holiday-making about him. The 
postcard shops were doing a lively business, and 
I daresay that the evening post to the Middle 
West went burdened with coloured views of San 
Marco and the Anastasia lighthouse and many 
harmlessly exaggerated accounts of "tropic" 
Florida, palms, flowers, oysters and alligators. 

The only alligator we saw in Florida occu- 
pied a stone bathtub in the Plaza, and we paused 
on our way across the square to hang on the rim 
of his prison and admire the few bumpy bits of 
his anatomy that showed above the brackish 
water. His eyes were closed and he wore a ter- 
rible smile, like the fixed grin of a prehistoric 
mummy. He was loathsome and as immovable 
as a stone, and although we would have liked to 
join the circle of small boys who had attached 
themselves to the railing in a hopeless passion 
for the inscrutable reptile, we really had to have 
lunch. 

We had fixed on the Ponce de Leon as the 
ideal place for that ceremony, but when we stood 
in King Street between Hastings' two master- 
pieces, the Ponce de Leon and the newer Alca- 
zar, we decided in favour of the less famous of 
the two. The Ponce de Leon's terra cotta tow- 
ers and wide-flung roofs are perhaps too magnifi- 

[185] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

cent for a town as architecturally simple as St. 
Augustine. We turned into the Alcazar because 
we liked its beautiful facade and the truly Span- 
ish courtyard filled with the splash and tinkle of 
fountain jets and blazing with flowers. Here, 
we were in the fashionable atmosphere again. 
Young men in white flannels lounged in the cor- 
ridors, discreet children rolled hoops along the 
garden walks and very modern young women sat 
decoratively about in summer gowns. Outside, 
in the streets of simple St. Augustine, the natives 
were wearing overcoats and furs, and complain- 
ing bitterly of the cold. Fashion said, "This is 
a winter resort; it is supposed to be warm," and 
wore white. The same thing happened in Cairo 
and Palermo, Biskra and Monte Carlo before 
the war. One shivered, but tradition kept win- 
ter flannels under lock and key. 

We had lunch to the tune of the fountain jets, 
with a glimpse through an open door of the sun- 
ny cortile and a shower of purple bougainvillea 
that poured down from the second story and 
sprayed its fallen petals over the garden walks. 

"This is Spain," I said. 

"M'am?" The waiter had thrust the menu 
under my nose and thought — heaven knows what 
he thought. 

[186] 



OF THE SOUTH 

"This is Spain," I said again, trying to catch 
Allan's eye. 

"Yes, m'am," the waiter answered. "Will 
you have some soup? The chicken soup is very 
nice, now? Or perhaps an hors-d'oeuvres?" 

"This," I whispered weakly, "is Spain. . . . 
Bring me a large sirloin steak, potatoes O'Brien 
— that's a Spanish name! — artichokes and after- 
wards a salad." 

Allan looked up as the waiter rushed away. 
"If it is Spain," he said bitterly, "I can't afford 
a Rabelaisian feast like that! Ham and eggs 
cost two dollars and a half, my dear." 

When Allan says "My dear," his afifection is 
at a low ebb. I choked over the steak although 
it was fearfully good. The waiter was an artful 
creature. He knew the trick of making you feel 
that the poverty of your order pained him deep- 
ly. He suggested, by his raised eyebrows, that 
he had always waited on financially unbridled 
people. He hovered, murmuring that the as- 
paragus was very good, that we might like mush- 
rooms, that he could bring us, if we only give 
him the word, food worth twenty dollars. He 
deplored our plebeian steak in his very manner 
of serving it. In the end, of course, Allan suc- 
cumbed to his blandishments and, avoiding my 

[187] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

eye, ordered an elaborately indigestible dessert 
which neither of us wanted. 

Instantly, as if his purpose were accomplished 
and he had no further use for us, the waiter be- 
came haughty and aloof; while we tackled the 
expensive pastry, he joined one of his co-fiends 
and gossiped softly. Nor did our bill impress 
him; he tucked it carelessly, upside down to 
spare my feelings and to foil my curiosity, under 
Allan's plate, and then bore away a ten dollar 
bill for mutilation with the indifiference of a 
bank clerk. 

But we recovered our self-respect as soon as 
we reached the sunny Plaza again. We sat 
there through a drowsy hour, watching the life 
of the little city as it ebbed and flowed through 
the square. The flecked shadows of the oaks and 
cedars and splendid palms made fantastic pat- 
terns on the walks and on the greensward. Every 
passerby of possibly Spanish complexion, and 
they were many, stirred us to lively discussions. 
Were they really descendants of the first Spanish 
settlers or of those romantic Minorcans whose 
history is so tragically woven into the complex 
story of St. Augustine? You probably remem- 
ber, unless you "always skip the historical para- 
graphs" (I do, except when I have to write 
them!) that when Florida was ceded to England 

[188] 



OF THE SOUTH 

in 1763, the outraged Spaniards fled St. Augus- 
tine bag and baggage and took their hurt feelings 
to Cuba. 

The Minorcans were brought over not long 
after the change of rule by an English planter, 
Nicholas Turnbull, who put the simple and un- 
suspecting people to work on his indigo farms 
at New Smyrna and then virtually enslaved 
them. They were too guileless, or too intimi- 
dated, to know that Turnbull had no legal right 
to force them to pay for their passage in terms 
of servitude, and they had endured this intoler- 
able martyrdom nine years before one of them, 
learning somehow that there was an English 
governor at St. Augustine, escaped and took the 
story of his people's humiliation to an English 
court. And since the liberated Minorcans 
settled at St. Augustine, leaving Nicholas Turn- 
bull high and dry on his labourless indigo farm, 
it is probably Minorcan and not Spanish blood 
which darkens the eyes and cheeks of those olive- 
skinned and beautiful St. Augustinians who 
passed us in the Plaza. 

We were caught into the spirit of the siesta 
hour, too lazy to go into the Catholic cathedral 
which faces the Plaza on its northern side. We 
sat, instead, on the comfortable garden bench 
and looked at the beautiful simplicity of the 

[189] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

facade, unbroken save by a statue of a saint set 
justly in a niche, and by a triune belfry and a 
cross. Children scampered by, knots of gos- 
siping and laughing negroes ambled past on 
their own mysterious and leisurely business, 
flower sellers displaying neat little bouquets of 
gardenias and camellias on wooden trays mean- 
dered up and down making picturesque figures 
of themselves, and everywhere the home-towners 
rattled newspapers and shifted with the sun from 
bench to bench. The old stone obelisk reminded 
us of a certain little fountain in the Cascine gar- 
dens at Florence ; if you have been there you will 
remember the dedication to Narcissus and the 
shallow bowl of clear water and the emerald 
shadows of the ancient grove of oaks. 

The tin automobile, making hideous sounds, 
roused us from our gentle laziness. The driver 
spied us from the street and we went back to the 
car reluctantly, like victims going to certain tor- 
ture. The garage had done its utmost for the 
tin ruin. The tires were bandaged and plastered 
and trepanned and stuffed to the bursting point 
with oxygen. And the driver, still copiously be- 
dewed and almost invisible under a coat of 
grease and mud, assured us on his oath that he 
could "make forty all the way back to Jax." 

It was sunset when we left the town, for we 
[190] 



OF THE SOUTH 

were beguiled into an "oldest house" which 
proved to be the wrong one and where we saw 
nothing but a mildewed print of Osceola, a chair 
made of elephant's tusks and some other mid- 
Victorian curios that had nothing to do with St. 
Augustine or antiquity. While it cost us noth- 
ing to view these exhilarating horrors, it cost a 
quarter to take leave of them! 

When we swung (oh, yes, we were swinging 
when we started) out of the old gates, the sky 
was quite magnificent and the wide Bay had 
taken on a deep and luminous blue. We hur- 
ried through a long avenue of moss-draped oaks 
where I shut my eyes because I don't like moss, 
particularly when it is choking splendid old 
trees in a death embrace and hiding the rich 
green of leaves with its drab, bone-hued ugli- 
ness. Twilight found us rattling swiftly 

Bang! 

We descended; we patched, we spoke hope- 
fully of its being the last time. Then on. 

Bang! 

The struggle all over again. Then on. 

Bang! 

Terrible curses from the driver. All the tires 
were gone now. And it was dark. And we were 
ten miles from Jacksonville. We stopped. 
The lights went out and refused to burn again. 

[191] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

It was chilly and lonely. A white mist drifted 
close to the ground, but overhead a conflagration 
of stars burned remotely. Frogs cheeped, trilled 
and whistled liquid, bubbling whistles. Again 
the driver knelt and probably perspired. I 
didn't care. I hoped that some dashing motor- 
ist would happen along and offer to take me — 
not Allan or the driver — ^^back to Jacksonville. 
But no one happened along except an inconceiv- 
ably ragged negro who rose out of the swamps 
and squatted near us to stare dumbly. 

"It's no use," the driver admitted in a dull 
voice, rising from his knees and clapping his 
dusty hands together. "We'll have to go in on 
the rims." 

And we did. Ten miles — on the rims — it 
surpasses description. At eleven o'clock we 
drove up to the door of the Seminole in what 
was left of the tin automobile. And there on 
the doorstep was a smiling gentleman with mous- 
tachios and a yachting cap. He bowed and extri- 
cated us from the wreck with tender murmurs. 

"I trust," he said, "that you enjoyed the trip." 

Can you, now can you, beat that? If I had 
had the strength I would have tweaked his nose. 
As it was, I watched Allan count out seventeen 
one dollar bills into the creature's hand. Then, 
I think, I fainted. 

[192] 



CHAPTER VIII 

. TAMPA, SPANIARDS AND THE GREEK SPONGE 
FLEET AT TARPON 




LL we saw of Tampa, to begin with, 
was the enormous Tampa Bay Hotel. 
As usual, our train was late — three 
hours and a half late, this time — and 
we had stumbled into the first taxi-cab, too dog- 
tired to even glance at the city on our way 
through it. When we got to the hotel we won- 
dered whether we should ever see anything of 
Tampa beyond the endless halls and drawing- 
rooms, lobbies and porches of that prodigious 
hostelry. A jaunty Northern coon snapped his 
fingers and rattled the keys of number five hun- 
dred and ninety-six and five hundred and ninety- 
seven, as we panted at his heels past miles of 
doors, across acres of red carpet, down a cor- 
ridor that went on like a nightmare — 

''Dinner at seven," he said. And added with 
a broad Boston accent, "It's half-past eight 



now." 



The insinuation was so plain that we scarcely 

[193] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

waited to brush off the accumulation of white 
Florida dust which had settled on our clothes, 
but started out to dinner like people with a 
vision, pursuing the promise of food down mo- 
notonous miles and miles of red-carpeted corri- 
dors. The dining-room, when we finally got 
there, was like an Orientalised Pantheon, so 
astounding in its proportions that we entered it 
with awe and our tiptoeing echoed around the 
great dome like the thunder of an army. We 
hurried through our dinner because it required 
at least three thousand electric bulbs to light our 
solitary repast, and the head waiter stood with 
his hand on the switch which controlled the il- 
lumination, depressed, I think, by the prodigal 
wasting of so much brilliance. Dinner came 
from a far-distant kitchen and, in spite of pre- 
cautionary covers and wrappings, arrived cold. 
But the delicious oranges which we had for des- 
sert were picked in the hotel gardens, and we 
fancied that they were still warm from the after- 
noon sun. 

We went to bed overwhelmed by our sur- 
roundings. It was like being in the Alhambra, 
if you can imagine the Alhambra comfortably 
furnished in the late-Victorian manner. In 
spite of "hot and cold running water in 

[194] 



OF THE SOUTH 

every room," you looked instinctively for a bell- 
rope. 

It was breathlessly hot — as unlike January as 
January on the Riviera. We put out the lights, 
and with the windows wide open leaned on the 
sill and breathed deeply of the moist night air, 
fragrant with the spice of flowering bushes and 
trees. And for the first time we felt that we 
were really in the romantic South we had been 
pursuing all the way from Maryland through 
snow, sleet and dripping fog. Overhead the 
arch of the sky was luminous with swarming 
stars, little ones twinkling, big ones very steady 
and blue, a wide path where the Milky Way 
flowed through them all from the top of the 
heavens down into the tangled darkness of the 
garden. We could see the closely-packed foli- 
age of the wide-spreading oaks, a spray of 
ghostly, feathery bamboo, a tall palm with a 
cluster of leaves atop like a Japanese baby's 
hair-cut, and, shooting starward, a minaret with 
a silver crescent balanced sideways on its tip. 

The morning was even lovelier. The dining- 
room was less like the Tomb of Napoleon (or 
did I say the Pantheon?) when it was full of 
people, and there was an animated bustle of 
New England waitresses and mannered head- 
waiters. The coffee, brought at a dog-trot by a 

[195] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

conscientious waitress, survived the journey from 
the kitchens and was still steaming when we 
poured it into our cups. It is easy to see why 
the hotel management chooses its employes from 
Puritan stock! 

We saw lots of nice, comfortable old ladies, 
*'Not chic," I whispered to Allan, "but Chi- 
cago." There were a few old gentlemen ad- 
vertising by their knickerbockers that they in- 
tended to play golf. There was a dangerously 
lovely female and a handful of exuberant Span- 
iards chattering about the price of tobacco as 
if it were lyric poetry. And of course the inevi- 
table hotel "undesirable," the pathetic, snubbed 
little man who looks like a Portuguese Jew, 
wears white flannels, turns his feet out, flashes a 
diamond ring, and is eager in a dumb, doglike 
way, to meet some one who will talk to him, 
and who never does, and who smiles and smiles. 
... It was amazingly like the Riviera before 
the war. I felt a reminiscent thrill because the 
women all "marcelled" their hair and wore 
pearls to breakfast. The world of war and suf- 
fering was forgotten. This was the dining-room 
of some Hotel des Anglais or Grand Hotel de 
New York as long ago as the spring of 1914, 
when Americans still rushed to Europe for the 
sort of lazy and purposeless enjoyment they are 

[196] 



OF THE SOUTH 

now seeking in Florida. Ttiere was perhaps 
not so much turning of the morning paper to 
the Society and Dramatic columns, but rather 
an ostentatious and dutiful scanning of the first 
page. Yet I felt that the poignant anguish of 
Europe was far removed from the leisurely well- 
to-do Americans who were sunning their well- 
nourished, comfortable bones in the South. We 
thought we had detected a flaw in the local col- 
our until we discovered a roulette outfit at the 
cigar-stand, where you could play for a "smoke." 
It was not petits chevaux, of course, but what 
do you expect? After breakfast Allan played 
forty cents and won a nickel cigar, and, puffed 
with victory, we went out into a trembling, joy- 
ous day ablaze with sunshine. 

The hotel faces the Hillsborough River and 
the city across a wide strip of tropical garden. 
Along its prodigious facade eight minaret-like 
towers, steely blue in colour, thrust against the 
sky and glitter quite magnificently. There are 
all sorts of intriguing and delightful African 
doorways and Moorish windows, fretted balco- 
nies and arched porches. A motion-picture di- 
rector in search of local colour would find exotic 
backgrounds in the gardens of the Tampa Bay 
Hotel ready-made and guaranteed to fit. Al- 
geria, Naples, Monte Carlo, Biskra, Tunis — - 

[197] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

they are all there! Little squads of tourists 
were being piloted over the grounds and through 
the hotel by the jaunty and supercilious bell- 
boys, whose greatest climax was reached when 
they announced crisply that all the "trimmings" 
of the hotel were made of steel, and to prove it 
rapped sharply on the railings or on one of the 
pillars of the porch. The tourists whispered 
among themselves and rapped, too, producing 
a metallic clatter. 

We followed a path which led to the river's 
edge. The ground was still wet with the night 
mist, the grass drenched and fragrant in the 
shadows. There were clusters of bamboo trem- 
bling slightly in the steady, warm wind, and 
lines of cabbage palms and patches of shiny- 
leaved bushes — ^magnolia, orange, gardenia and 
holly, with here and there the fresh, green foli- 
age and beautiful shade of an old live oak. 
There were blazing poinsettias everjrwhere, gor- 
geous purple bougainvilleas and the orange 
flame of the bignonia vine. Camellias and aza- 
leas starred the garden walks. It was pleasant 
to wander slowly through the checkered sun- 
light, admiring the polished leaves of the sweep- 
ing palm branches. There were palms that 
sprayed like fountains and palms that grew in 
symmetrical clusters, squat palms and very tall 

[198] 













WE COULD CHAT COMFORTABLY Willi ITIK CAPTAIN 
WITHOUT STIRRING FROM OUR GARDEN BENC H 



OF THE SOUTH 

ones, and big patches of palmetto scrub rustling 
crisply like a lady's fan. The benches were al- 
ready filled with less fashionable tourists and 
roomers, the easily-pleased home-towners al- 
ready encountered in St. Augustine, who had 
brought their morning papers or their knitting, 
and had settled themselves comfortably with 
their backs to the sun for the whole morning. 
Tampa owns the Tampa Bay Hotel, and its gar- 
dens are thrown open to the public. 

At the river's edge we found a small sailing- 
boat anchored so close to shore that we could 
chat comfortably with her captain without stir- 
ring from our garden bench. She was called 
the Sir Francis and had come all the way down 
from Seattle, through the Panama Canal and 
up the Florida Coast. 

"How long did it take you to do it?" Allan 
wanted to know. 

"I was eighteen months in the doin' of it, sir," 
the Captain told us, "and I 'ad as fine a time as 
ever a man 'ad." 

We judged he was English. 

"Yes, sir! Born in Tilbury. That's a coun- 
try!" 

He spat rhythmically into the water while wc 
discussed the war. 

"England always wins," the Captain said. He 
[199] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

had a short memory, or else English history- 
books don't make much of 1776. But when he 
said with great violence, "You watch 'er! When 
England gets through, there won't be a 'Un in 
Germany," we cheered from our garden bench. 

"Come aboard," he invited us, feeling that we 
were sympathetic. "I've got a tidy little ship, 
I 'ave." 

So we got into the rickety tender and went out 
to the Sir Francis to pay a call. Her cabin was 
not quite high enough for us to stand erect in, 
but roomy enough, the Captain assured us, "for 
little fellers" like him. There was an iron stove, 
a bunk which folded up and became a bench 
by day, a table, and, of all things, an electric 
light to read by! No New York bachelor keep- 
ing house in an uptown flat could possibly be 
more comfortable. 

"I'm going on to the Bahamas to-morrow," 
the Captain told us, rhyming Bahamas with ba- 
nanas somehow. "All alone I am, too. And 
I've seen some queer things." 

No doubt. He had pink-lipped shells from 
far-away beaches, huge conches fluted and sing- 
ing, a pearl-like fragment as multi-hued as the 
tropic sea where he found it, dried sea-porcu- 
pines strung like lanterns from the cabin roof, 
lace-bark from South America, and the funniest 

[200] 



OF THE SOUTH 

collection of stones and broken crockery I have 
even seen. He was a travelled man and a ro- 
mantic man. He was doing what nine men out 
of ten, once in their lives at least, long to do, 
and for me he was tinged by all the dreams I 
have heard dreamed aloud. But he was per- 
fectly unaware of being romantic. He peeled 
potatoes for his lunch and spat over the rail. 

"Tampa's a fine place," he said. "Better go 
ashore and look her over. If I didn't 'ave to 
be getting on to the Bahamas, I'd stay a month. 
Glad you came aboard. Not at all, sir. 
Thanks!" 

So we left him, and following his advice went 
to look Tampa over. I'll tell you what we 
found, that day and many other days of warm 
wind and white sun. 

There is an office in Tampa where you are 
bound to hear talk of the sea. You can find it, 
if you search, in a new office building which 
overlooks both the harbour and the city. Be- 
fore the war, sea-going men from all over the 
world used to climb up there for a smoke and 
a chat whenever their ships called at Tampa. 
And it was our privilege to talk about Tampa 
with the genial Italian agent who had played 
host to so many travellers. From his window 
he pointed out the little square which was all 

[201] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

of Tampa twenty-five years ago, and then swept 
his hand toward the new city with a simple 
gesture which meant, "Still growing!" Behind 
a row of modern skyscrapers, some of them ten 
or twelve stories high, the big factory chimneys 
of Ybor City and West Tampa belched black 
smoke-plumes against the immaculate blue of 
the sky. 

Then the agent turned back toward the har- 
bour and pointed out the Government dredges 
at work in the channel and the site of the pro- 
posed estuary, where he said there would some 
day be municipal docks large enough for "fifty 
steamers to load and unload at the same time." 
He brought maps and showed us how Tampa 
Bay cuts northward into Florida for thirty miles, 
splitting into two natural harbours at its further- 
most tip. He pointed out Gasparilla Island, 
where La Fitte's rebel pirate held his orgies. 
He dealt in facts and in visions, tracing with his 
finger the present-day harbour and the infinitely 
larger, deeper port of the future. 

"There was no Tampa thirty years ago," he 
told us. "When I came here from the Abruzzi, 
Tampa was a little cluster of rude houses on the 
bank of the Hillsborough River — you could 
have put it all in the crown of your hat. H. B. 
Plant had just built his railway through to Port 

[202] 



OF THE SOUTH 

Tampa — here it is on the map, ten miles from 
here, d'you see? Plant was the Flagler of the 
Florida West Coast, and he dreamed of a great 
seaport town on Tampa Bay. Of the two har- 
bours he chose, not this, but the other, and for 
a while it looked as if Tampa were going to 
disappear in the new glory of Port Tampa. But 
certain independent business men, who were 
crowded out by exorbitant freight rates and the 
soaring price of real estate, moved away from 
Plant's city and settled here." He shrugged 
his shoulders. "Have you been in Port Tampa? 
To-day it is deserted and forlorn; grass grows 
in the centre of the streets; the houses are crum- 
bling away. Now look out of the window at 
Tampa! You see, the capitalist's vision of a 
seaport town on Tampa Bay has come true, but 
it is not just where he dreamed it would be." 

The agent went with us to the waterfront, 
and we had the unique pleasure of walking 
across the sandy stretches where "some day" the 
municipal docks will entertain those fifty steam- 
ers. It was late in the afternoon and the har- 
bour glittered magnificently, catching the fiery 
reflection of the setting sun. A lonely interned 
Austrian lay just outside, her rusty sides blazing. 
Closer in, a steamer was loading phosphate un- 
der the towering phosphate elevators of the Sea- 

[203] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

board Air Line. Judging from modern stand- 
ards, most of the ships we saw were small, and 
the agent told us that the European war had 
greatly reduced the activity of the port. Near 
us, a schooner was being loaded with lumber; 
a score of negroes rushed the cargo aboard, sing- 
ing as they worked. One of them chanted a 
verse in a thin falsetto, and the rest followed 
him, full throated and joyous. There is a catch 
in the negro voice, like the Swiss yodle, which 
always squeezes something in my heart. It is 
perhaps because they sing folk-music, piercingly 
sweet, poignantly sad and universal in its beauty. 

The big schooner belonged to the agent. He 
confided to us, as we watched the simian antics 
of the negro workmen, that the ship had had a 
lurid past. 

"I found her out in the Gulf," he told us, 
"floating bottom-side up. It was the third time, 
mind you, that she had turned turtle and killed 
her whole crew! I hauled her in, made her 
over, rechristened her the Charles Wiebe for 
luck, killed all the little hoodoos and sent her to 
sea again. She carries lumber to Havana." 

"An incorrigible murderess," I said, thinking 
of Conrad's story. 

"Oh, no," he answered, smiling, "she has re- 
formed!" 

[204] 



OF THE SOUTH 

You would like Tampa for the I don't know 
what of the foreign in its atmosphere, something 
intangible and exuberant which the ten thou- 
sand Cubans and Spaniards who live there have 
charged the air with, perhaps! One sees Span- 
iards everywhere, some of them still untouched 
by that process of Americanisation which puts 
peg-tops on a Castilian and teaches him how to 
say "Sure!" We saw some splendid old fellows, 
seamed and leathery, wearing the broad, black 
felt hat and the flopping trousers of the Spanish 
peasant, and swarthy young men who were the 
living embodiment of Zuloaga's canvases. Their 
quarters — street after street of whitewashed 
shanties — are near the big red-brick factories of 
the Cuesta-Rey, the Perfecto, the Principe de 
Gales and a half dozen other cigar manufac- 
tories at West Tampa. Here and there a patch 
of garden has been scratched enough to nourish 
a feeble poinsettia or a rosebush. Spanish 
women smile from the doorsteps and Spanish 
babies roUic in the gutters. On Sunday and 
festa days, the girls promenade arm in arm, gig- 
gling and flirting, the men swagger and smile, 
the old people look on from the cool shadow 
of the doorways — it is Spain transplanted. And 
ever5rwhere there is a fragrant odour of tobacco, 

[205] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

as if some one had just opened a huge cigar- 
box! 

In Tampa the sidewali^^s are shaded by per- 
manent awnings and there is the same play of 
light and shadow which you find in an arcad- 
ed town — the street flooded with sun, a smash- 
ing riot of colour and movement, the sidewalks 
cool and shadowy. At night, Main Street was 
crowded; the shops, with their display windows 
brilliantly lighted, were all open, and for the 
first time since we left New York we saw pretty 
girls. They strolled up and down the arcaded 
streets or sat on high stools before marble soda- 
water shrines, sipping pink drinks through a 
straw, and Allan was so enraptured that I had 
to steer him into a Movie Theatre to shift his 
attention. 

The ^'movies"! The histrionic intoxication 
of the modern wayfarer, a shadowy substitute 
for the strolling players, the marionettes and 
circuses of Gautier's day! We joined an audi- 
ence of tender little children who were watch- 
ing a Brieuxesque drama which would have sent 
shivers of horror down an Apache's spine. The 
tender little boys and girls chewed gum and 
stared solemnly and — sat through it again ! They 
were still there, chewing and staring, when we 

[206] 



OF THE SOUTH 

escaped. Poor, funny little Tampa-ites! And 
we were denied Ivanhoe at their age. . . . 

More than anything else, Tampa delighted 
us because it was clean. I don't know why I 
profess myself so loudly a lover of the spick and 
span. I relish the ardent flavour of cheese and 
sausage in the Borgognissanti at Florence and 
that inexplicable odour which takes you by the 
nose and by the soul over behind the Venetian 
fish-market; I like the mud at Tivoli and the 
dripping walls at Assisi, plastered with the filth 
of a thousand years; nor do I hold my nose in 
dainty horror at Santa Lucia. But a puddle in 
a modern American city offends me, and an eddy 
of dirty newspapers in the gutter arouses all my 
civic ire. It has always seemed to me that since 
Newness is the symbol of our youth, and be- 
cause there has been no time for mellow decay, 
we ought to be intolerant of neglect. Tampa did 
not let the post office and the court house carry 
off all the civic honours, in the slovenly manner 
of so many American cities. Everywhere there 
were substantial houses, many of them built in 
the Spanish style which is so perfectly harmoni- 
ous under the Florida sky. And there were at- 
tractive clubs, parks, boulevards and avenues 
of palms and live oaks. Even the drawbridge 
had felt the need to be beautiful. It opened in 

[207] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

the middle like a pair of scissors and kept its 
machinery hidden under a frivolous little pavil- 
ion! 

Handbills were being distributed in the 
streets announcing pinkly that at the Teatro 
Centra Astruriano, Esfa noche Sabado, Enero 
20, a las 8 en punto, there would be a perform- 
ance of Rigoletto, Gran Opera en 4 (ictos del 
celebre Maestro G. Verdi. 

I went, hoping to hear something frightful so 
that I could be funny about it. But the Mancini 
Company disappointed me by giving a really 
good performance of Rigoletto. It was the sort 
of singing and the sort of audience we have 
long ceased to hope for in New York. Between 
the acts all the young men paced up and down 
the lobby, making vociferous gestures and pre- 
tending that they knew everything about style 
and tradition. Tampa? America? We had to 
pinch ourselves to drive out the hallucination 
that somehow we had stumbled into Spain. 

Later in the week, as a very particular treat 
for the American tourists, a Gran Funcion Ex- 
traordinaria, grand opera moved across the 
Hillsborough River to the Tampa Bay Hotel 
Casino and Trovatore was sung to an almost 
invisible audience. We stood near the stage 
door and heard the outraged impresario curse 

[208] 



OF THE SOUTH 

the whole tourist tribe in seven ardent tongues. 

"They are unmusical dogs," he roared, "fit 
for nothing but hand-organ symphonies!" 

We went back to the hotel very saddened, and 
found that tourists do like music, after all! The 
lobby resounded with ragtime, and a lonely hall- 
boy was flapping an ecstatic one-step, on his way 
somewhere with a pitcher of ice water. Every 
one else had "gone to dance," he told us. He was 
a Boston bellboy, but he couldn't keep his feet 
still. We, too, went to dance. A drum, a sob- 
bing saxaphone, a whining ukelele, a piano and 
a violin made music in the ballroom. Turn, 
tum, tumity tum, click, click, clickity bing! Zip, 
zip, zipity smash/ Bang, bang, bimbledy bang! 

"Oh, isn't it great?" 

They skipped and slid and swaggered and 
minced, old ones and young ones. They whirled 
and stepped and walked like jerky automatons; 
they clutched and clung and spun on their toes. 
Zing, zing, zingityzing! 

We stepped out on the polished floor and in- 
stantly forgot all about Trovatore. Zipity zip! 
What is American music coming to, anyway? 
Has any one ever stopped to think that this sort 
of thing is wilder than a Hungarian spasm? 
Has any one — choo choo, chiggity choo — ever 
stopped to think that there never has been a 

[209] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

symphony all in ragtime? Or an American 
rhapsody? I wonder — 

"For heaven's sake, stop wondering," Allan 
said, "and dance." 

So we danced. 

The hotel and its gardens were alluring, but 
the time had come when we had to decide to 
spend the rest of our winter vacation in Tampa 
or go on at once towards New Orleans. And 
Tarpon Springs was marked on our itinerary 
in large letters and "double-starred" according 
to Baedeker's helpful system. So we devoted 
our last day in Tampa to the rounding out of 
our schedule. Tarpon is twenty-five miles north 
of Tampa; we could do little more than check 
it off our list and then boast forever afterwards, 
like the Yankee tripper who "does" Venice in 
an hour, that we had been there. The hotel 
advertised motors for hire and held out the 
promise of "chauffeurs in uniform," But they 
cheated us — or else I am under a misapprehen- 
sion as to what a uniform is. For the driver of 
the car we hired for the trip to Tarpon was 
wearing a plaid cap (a Scotch plaid which had 
undergone a sea-change), a pea-green overcoat 
and yellow shoes. A very broad smile and a 
lovely Southern accent went w^th the uniform. 
I would have gone miles to hear him say 

[210] 




THE HOTEL AND ITS GARDENS WERE ALLURING 



OF THE SOUTH 

"gy-arden" and "cyah." He warned us that 
there was a "powerful bad piece of road" to 
negotiate on the way to Tarpon; the main road 
was under repair and a detour of a mile and a 
half had been cut around it through the woods. 
He wasn't perfectly sure that we could get 
through, but he was "spo't" enough to try. So 
we left early in the morning when Tampa and 
the alluring gardens were still wrapped in a 
thick mist. 

For a long time spatters of rain stung our 
cheeks. But the driver assured us that it would 
clear, partly because he was an optimist and 
partly because he was in deadly fear that we 
would turn back. His spo'ting instinct yearned 
to tackle the detour. 

Promptly at ten o'clock, as if a mysterious 
stage manager had rung up the curtain on the 
pageant of Florida, the fog broke away before 
the sun and retreated helter-skelter, in platoons 
and brigades of little clouds, down behind the 
horizon. We were left under an arch of trans- 
parent sky, immaculately blue and clear. The 
shell road was so flat and flawless that we began 
to doubt that "powerful bad" stretch further on. 
It ran as straight as the Appian Way, narrow- 
ing in perspective as far as the eye could reach 
through a sparse forest of long-leaf pine. The 

[211] 



, OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

air was fragrant with the smoke of little fires 
that burned slowly through the underbrush, and 
a blue haze drifted close to the ground like a 
veil flung across the vivid green of the palmetto 
scrub. We passed groups of negroes who rolled 
their eyes at us as we flashed by; occasionally 
a white farmer in a one-horse buggy trotted past 
on his way to town. But most of the road was 
deserted save for a scurrying quail or a lonely 
cow standing knee-deep in the swampy ditches, 
or a majestic, wide-winged buzzard hanging 
motionless just over our heads. Apparently no 
one else was going to Tarpon Springs. We soon 
discovered why. 

The road stopped and an impudent sign 
labelled ^'Detour" directed us into what looked 
like an impassable bog. The driver turned to 
us with a beaming smile. "Hold on," he said, 
with a spo'ting light in his eye, "for I reckon 
you'll need to." 

We plunged into a ditch, roared up a bank 
on the other side and leaped headlong into a 
swamp. The car, taken by surprise, coughed 
and spluttered and careened like a ship in mid- 
channel. We slithered and skidded in mud, 
climbed over logs, wriggled under fallen trees. 
The back of the driver's neck got a shade redder, 
but he whistled courageously. Allan and I 

[212] 



OF THE SOUTH 

clung on with both hands and were racked bone 
by bone like heretics in a torture chamber; my 
hat blew off, my hair came down and there was 
a pool of hairpins in my lap. In the midst of 
the ordeal, when the only endurable alternative 
seemed to be unconsciousness, we came out into 
a wide clearing. 

"This is Oldsmar," the driver explained, and 
added, with a touch of awe in his voice, "the 
Oldsmobile man's Oldsmar." 

The automobile man had bought a large slice 
of land bet\veen Tampa and Tarpon Springs and 
had planned an agricultural "community." 
Work in the new town was going on at top speed 
when we were there. They were building a 
hotel for imaginary tourists, a garage for vision- 
ary automobiles, and stores for merchants who 
may and may not occupy them. Plots were be- 
ing staked off in the cleared spaces for future 
householders, farms were being apportioned and 
engines were already puffing up and down the 
single-track railway, busy and important, blow- 
ing big steam rings up above the green tops of 
the tranquil pines. We passed through Madison 
Avenue and State Street, both more or less ob- 
structed by bottomless puddles, tree stumps and 
tenacious weeds, and somewhere on one of Olds- 
mar's spacious boulevards the car became so 

[213] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

discouraged that the rear wheel refused to go 
around. The driver made a gingerly decent 
and lured us forward again by plucking a hand- 
ful of palmetto and strewing it before the car 
like Sir Walter spreading his cloak before Eliza- 
beth. 

How would it feel, I wonder, to own a slice 
of Florida and, like a genii rubbing a magic 
lamp, to say: "This shall be a town. These for- 
ests shall be fields. Here a house. There an 
orchard." And when it has all sprung into 
existence, to stock the farms with pigs, horses, 
chickens and cows. Presto! An orange tree 
in bloom, a garden already springing through 
the rich earth, perhaps a kettle on the hearth. 
How would it feel, I wonder, to say: "Here is 
your farm, you homeseeker — wherever you 
are. For so much and so much, you may buy 
this little Arcadia, ready made and guaranteed 
to fit." 

We were glad that the detour had led us 
through the miracle. The asphalt pavement in 
the heart of the pine forest was poignant because 
it was put there for hypothetical passers-by who 
might never pass. Speculating in communities! 
For that, Mr. Olds, you prove that there is still 
a faint belief in men's heart, enough hankering 
for the El Dorado to gamble on. 

[214] 



OF THE SOUTH 

We finally bounced out of the detour and re- 
joined the road — oh, the lovely, smooth white 
road! And then it was straight-away to Tar- 
pon, breezy and fast, with the motor purring and 
the highway unfurling like a ribbon. The for- 
est thinned; we came to clearings and to orange 
and grapefruit groves — globes of gold that bore 
the branches down to the ground. For the first 
time we saw the Gulf of Mexico scalloping into 
the land with an endless pattern of little bays 
and inlets, shallow water glittering under the 
high sun and lapping the sandy shore with myr- 
iad, exact ripples, fluted and exhaustless. It 
was like a setting for a Conrad story, very re- 
mote and tropical, suggestive of the grim strug- 
gles of the spirit that go on against a background 
of cloudless sky, breathless heat, and lonely, 
palm-fringed beaches. 

A golf-links and some very fashionable peo- 
ple, tweeded and caddied, warned us that we 
were drawing near Tarpon Springs. So we 
stopped, while I retrieved some of the hairpins, 
tucked up my bang and put on my hat. The 
friendly driver was so frankly interested in my 
vanity-box that I stopped short with the powder 
puff in mid-air and ordered him to go on, and 
we roared into Tarpon with the puff in action, 
to the vociferous astonishment of some pickanin- 

[215] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

nies on a fence who had never seen a lady "whit- 
ening" herself. 

People who go to Tarpon Springs go there 
to fish, or to play golf, or to sail, or to be sim- 
ply dreamy, for there is a lazy enchantment 
about the place which is very insidious. A few 
of them, like us, make the sponge-fleet an ex- 
cuse. We left the pretty bungalows and the 
neat main street of the town, and went at once 
to Greek Town on the Anclote River. 

Sponge fishermen, for some inexplicable rea- 
son that I am unable to explain, are always 
Greeks. Off the coast of Tripoli, in British 
Honduras, in Key West and here at Tarpon 
Springs, Greeks, and only Greeks, pursue the 
tenacious sponge. Their calling, like the Mur- 
ano glass-blowers', may be handed down from 
father to son, a sort of hereditary talent. At any 
rate, the fleet at Tarpon is manned entirely by 
Greeks, although the "catch" is sold to Amer- 
ican buyers. And Greeks colour the place as 
distinctively as the Spaniards tinge Tampa with 
their fiery Latinism. The Greek language is 
spoken everywhere in the streets and decorates 
shop-signs, bill-boards and restaurant bills-of- 
fare. 

The fleet leaves port for cruises which last 
from two to five months, according to the weath- 

[216] 



OF THE SOUTH 

er and the size of the "catch." "Over a mil- 
lion dollars' worth of business a year" is the re- 
markable record of the sponge industry at Tar- 
pon Springs. It used to be the custom to grap- 
ple for the sponges with long poles, pronged at 
the tip like a pitchfork. But to-day every 
sponge-boat carries one or two expert divers 
who go down in very deep water, often to the 
depth of a hundred and twenty feet, and tear 
the tenacious growth away from the rocks. Each 
schooner is accompanied by a smaller diving- 
boat which is moored alongside like a baby 
snuggling against its mother. The divers make 
their descents from the low, broad decks of the 
smaller boats, carrying a net and the three- 
pronged grappler and wearing the ponderous 
and grotesque helmet and the unwieldy suit of 
a deep-sea diver. Their life is spent in the 
flickering half-light of that weird world at the 
bottom of the ocean. They struggle against the 
treacherous currents and implacable tides; they 
walk in coral gardens, through groves of feath- 
ery sea-weed and tall grass which waves rhythm- 
ically to the pulse of the sea; they know all the 
mysteries of the ocean — bulbous fish, ogling and 
wide-lipped sharks, the hideous octopus, jelly- 
fish, transparent, opalescent and motionless. The 
treasure they are in search of clings to the coral 

[217] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

formations, to rocks, to the fluted sand-bottom. 
Some of the sponges are as flat and widespread as 
geranium leaves, some of them grow in fat clus- 
ters like gigantic golden grapes, some of them 
are shaped like fungi, and as porous as a honey- 
comb. The diver, bracing himself against the 
tugging currents, pries the growth loose with 
his grappler and fills his net. It is dangerous 
and exhausting work. We saw several men along 
the waterfront at Tarpon who walked with the 
utmost difficulty, dragging their legs and twist- 
ing grotesquely in their efforts to put one foot 
before the other. They told us that they had 
been attacked by "diver's paralysis." They still 
made descents, and they assured us that they 
could walk without any difficulty under water, 
which is, after all, their accustomed element. 
Free of the enormous pressure and safe and dry 
on land, they suffered like gasping fish. 

The fishermen were an exuberant, cheerful 
lot, well-built and handsome, brown of skin, 
black-haired, blue-eyed and sturdy. They 
walked with a swagger, swaying from the hips. 
Some of them were barefooted but none of them 
was bareheaded — they crowned the classicism of 
their Greek profiles with checkered caps and 
battered straw hats. One of them, like a glori- 
fied Charlie Chaplin, had a number two derby 

[218] 



OF THE SOUTH 

atop a wild mop of black curls. Sartorially 
they ran to gaudy shirts and screaming neckties 
— and we blessed them just for that. 

"Photograph" is the international esperanto 
for friendliness. Wherever we pointed the cam- 
era a dozen Greeks leaped to get into the picture. 
They posed for us like self-conscious effigies, all 
in a row with cast-iron grins, their feet turned 
out and a curl of black hair pulled down across 
their eyes like a Coster's forelock 

I was glad that they had given their boats 
Greek names for the most part. Although 
"Charm" and "Kilkis" and "Three Brothers" 
do very well for Gloucester fishermen, the Greek 
alphabet, when it spells XAAKH decorates a 
prow as delicately as a scroll of flowers. Could 
anything be lovelier than Ar. TEOPros.? 

The Greeks had their own coffee-houses 
and restaurants all along the water-front, and 
there w^ere one or two shops where you could 
buy sponge fragments, shells, alligator's teeth, 
coral branches, frail sea anemones, delicate star- 
fish, postcards or a bunch of green bananas and 
a package of Zu-Zus! 

A young Greek hailed us from the porch of 
one of the coffee-houses. 

"Hey, you!" he shouted, with a flashing smile. 
"Take my picture with this here pipe." 

[219] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

This here — or should I say that there? — pipe 
was a large hubble-bubble. He had curled his 
bare toes around the bottle, the long tube was 
in his mouth and clouds of blue smoke rocketed 
skyward. We took the photograph, even though 
the young Greek was sitting in a Stygian shadow. 
Nothing appeared on the developed film but a 
bottle and ten toes. Instead of a peaceful genre, 
we had photographed what looked like the fe- 
vered imaginings of a spiritual seance. There 
were the disembodied pedal extremities of a 
Greek grasping a crystal sphere — and nothing 
else I 

But the sunny wharves and the dazzling fleet 
held us outside. It was like the Marina Grande 
at Capri, Palermo and Trieste and rolled into 
one. It was gaudy, it was theatrical, it was 
amazingly beautiful! Wouldn't you have been 
bewildered if you had come upon a mirage of 
the Mediterranean in Florida — only right-side 
up and tangible? 

The Greeks had had their "Cross day" or 
Epiphany celebration the day before; the whole 
fleet was in port and all the streets were deco- 
rated with flowers, bunting, and the Greek and 
American flags intertwined. There had been a 
three-hour service at the Greek Church which 
we had missed and can never forgive ourselves 

[220] 




rHK GREEKS HAD SAID TlIi;iR PRAYERS AND WERE AT 
WORK Ac; A IX 



OF THE SOUTH 

for missing. There had been prayer, songs and 
incense. Fifteen hundred Greeks had crowded 
the little church at Tarpon to stand during the 
whole impressive service from eight o'clock un- 
til eleven. A great basin of water had been 
blessed and there had been a mad scramble to dip 
it up in cups, pitchers, jugs and bottles, and to 
carry a drop or two away. There had been a 
solemn procession through the streets to the wa- 
ter's edge at Spring Bayou, where the priest, 
standing under a canopy, had prayed and then, 
with all his strength, had flung a cross out into 
the water. Dozens of young Greeks had plunged 
in after it. One of them, stronger, pluckier, more 
desirous perhaps than the rest, had come up with 
the glittering cross in his hands. He had held it 
high above his head for the crowd on the bank to 
see. They had cheered him and his heart had 
been bursting with pride and happiness. ... It 
was bad enough to have missed it, but to be told 
about it heaped coals of regret on my head. 

Now, in the blazing white morning, the ships 
lay side by side in an intricate confusion, some 
in the river, some drawn up on the beach, others 
lifted high and dry on land and propped up with 
blocks and beams. The Greeks had said their 
prayers and were at work again, coiling ropes, 
mending nets, painting, staggering aboard their 

[221] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

little schooners under heavy boxes of provisions, 
sorting sponges. . . . Greeks, praise God, love 
blue! Along the wharves that glittering morn- 
ing there were ships painted blue from stern to 
bow, ships with blue masts, ships with blue bow- 
sprits. They had scarlet keels and decorative 
friezes painted on their sides in orange and 
black — crude designs of extraordinary beauty. 
Their blunt noses were piled with sponges, 
fruits, tawny sails, anchors, coils of rope, div- 
ers' helmets and vegetables. Spar and chains, 
bowsprits and masts tangled everywhere. It was 
the most dazzling confusion, the most magnifi- 
cent bedlam! 

We stayed until the sun slanted low across the 
river, rimming the myriad tipping masts with a 
fiery glitter. Then we turned reluctantly away 
to the hired motor because the friendly driver 
had warned us for the tenth time that it was 
growing late and that there was a "powerful bad 
piece of road. . . ." 



[222J 



CHAPTER IX 

'WAY DOWN IN PENSACOLA, SEAPLANES, SUB- 
MARINES, AND LUNCH WITH AN ADMIRAL, 
WITH A STORM AS AN ANTI-CLIMAX 




LL I knew about Pensacola, before I 
went there, was gleaned from a mus- 
ical comedy song: 



'Way down in Pensacola 
We'll wander where the palms grow. 
You'll find there's nothing to do 
But fool those Florida ladies! 

Not poetry, of course — but illuminating his- 
tory! Nothing to do but fool the ladies! I was 
still in knee-skirts when I heard the song, but 
I can remember the chorus girl who sang it, 
greatly assisted by her ankles, against a blazing 
stage-setting of palms and unnaturally blue sky. 
From that moment, if I thought of Pensacola 
at all, I thought of it as a tropical rest-cure 
where tired sailors did nothing all day long but 
fool Florida ladies. And somehow I could not 
shake off the conviction. When we arrived 

[223] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

there after a hot, dusty journey from Jackson- 
ville, I expected to find myself in a great grove 
of cocoanut palms. I expected to see hammocks 
swinging lazily in a steady trade v^ind and sail- 
ors in white duck snuggling up to dusky belles. 
I expected to see Urbanesque cannibals sporting 
on glittering beaches and Winter Garden chorus 
girls fox-trotting in the calcium moonlight. 

Instead, I found a busy little city which 
looked, at first glance, like any other little city — 
but no taxi-cabs. We stood on the sidewalk with 
our luggage piled around us and hailed noctur- 
nal Ford riders with no success. They bounced 
on and ignored our frantic signals, while all the 
other travellers who had come to Pensacola on 
our train shouldered their own baggage and 
went away on foot. We might have been wait- 
ing there now if a policeman hadn't offered to 
"step down to the corner" and telephone for a 
taxi. I found myself wondering what would 
happen to me if, in a moment of abstraction, I 
should ask a New York policeman to kindly step 
into the nearest pay-station and "call me a black 
and white." The obliging Pensacolan officer, 
who looked like an admiral in his long coat and 
acres of gold braid, hurried briskly away on his 
charitable errand as if being a knight to travel- 
lers in distress was one of his accustomed duties. 

[224] 



OF THE SOUTH 

The taxi-cab, summoned by the law and ar- 
riving in a frantic hurry on two wheels, took us 
along a neat boulevard to an overgrown hotej 
on Palafox Street. It is known as the San Car- 
los and has a slightly Waldorfian manner, going 
in rather too extravagantly for marble pillars, 
palms, gold and gilt, steam heat, page boys, tele- 
phone girls, lounges, cigar stands, express ele- 
vators, and sky-scraper proportions. It did not 
seem possible that there could be a great enough 
floating population in Pensacola to warrant the 
magnificence of its hotel. It was built, we were 
told, during Pensacola's "boom," ten or twelve 
years ago, when the inhabitants of the little 
"deep-water city" were shouting themselves 
hoarse about her miraculous growth and equally 
miraculous future. At that time superlatives 
ceased to be conversational olives and got to be 
the bread and butter of daily speech. A "rea- 
sonable amount" of hotel wouldn't do for a city 
that was destined to be a "largest port," a naval 
station, a manufacturing centre and a fashion- 
able resort all rolled into one. So the towering 
San Carlos rose above Pensacola like a lonely 
mountain peak in the centre of a desert, a target 
for v^'indstorms and a symbol of the future. For- 
tunately for Pensacola, the "boom" gradually 
lost strength, like a petted kitten expiring under 

[225] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

indiscriminate caresses, and the city escaped that 
devastating ''bigness" which would have trans- 
formed her from a lovable town into a belching 
monster, blighted by factories, disfigured by sky- 
scrapers and utterly spoiled by riches. 

We opened our windows as soon as a sleepy 
bellboy had deposited our luggage and had 
gleaned a quarter for his pains. Then we hung 
on the window-sill and sniffed the moist night 
air, and stared down into the foreshortened street 
five stories below. Little Ford cars, like busy, 
shiny beetles, bustled up and down, squawking 
and pretending that Main — excuse me, I mean 
Palafox Street — was Broadway. Bustle and 
hurry, a sort of showy and Northern progressive- 
ness, had stamped itself on the town. The shops 
blazed, a Movie Theatre ejected a black stream 
of chattering "fans," trolley-cars clattered back 
and forth. And yet the wind was indescribably 
sweet and soft, and came straight from the Gulf 
across the tasselled tips of the encroaching pine 
forest. We felt the lazy enchantment of the 
Southern night and wondered at the liveliness of 
the Pensacolans in the street. 

Long after we had gone to bed the noisy crowd 
kept us awake. A knot of negro loungers on the 
corner talked until three o'clock. Their bub- 

[226] 



OF THE SOUTH 

bling laughter and the incessant Ford squawks 
were my lullaby. 

Yet I suppose it is only reasonable that the in- 
habitants of a city which has passed thirteen 
times from one government to another should be 
restless, volatile and animated. They have never 
been allowed to settle down long enough to be- 
come inoculated by the Florida languor, and 
now it is too 'ate to begin. One wouldn't inherit 
a languid temperament from ancestors who 
changed flags as glibly as wg change collars and 
who alternately succumbed to French, Spanish 
and British rule, adopting a new nationality so 
often that, with the chameleon who was put on 
a piece of Scotch plaid, they must have "busted" 
more than once with the effort of taking on so 
many colours. The Pensacolans have just begun 
to breathe again after a reckless and unstable 
history. No wonder that having survived such 
a past, they throw out their chests and tell the 
stranger that Pensacola is a miniature Paradise 
— the deepest harbour, the best climate, the 
purest water, the boldest men, the finest women, 
and, mind you, the oldest citv in the United 
States! 

"How's that?" you say, pricking up your ears, 
because you think you've caught me. "Doesn't 
St. Augustine wear that crown?" 

[227] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

Not at all! Pensacola was discovered by Don 
Tristan de Luna four years before St. Augustine, 
with malicious intention, first began to be the 
oldest city and to beguile the lives of settlers 
and the dollars of tourists. You probably won- 
der why Pensacola has neglected to advertise 
her distinction, scattering pamphlets broadcast 
to lure the tripper who can't pursue antiquity in 
Europe and has begun to search desperately for 
it nearer home. 

There is a reason for Pensacola's reticence, a 
fly in the ointment, a blot on the 'scutcheon. St. 
Augustine, first settled in 1565, was permanently 
established and its history has been in the mak- 
ing ever since. But de Luna abandoned Pensa- 
cola, its deep harbour and snow-white beaches 
two years after his landing there, and it was not 
until d'Ariola appeared, one hundred and fifty 
years later, that a permanent colony was estab- 
lished. It remained Spanish until the ambitious 
overlords of New Orleans, Iberville and Bien- 
ville, caught sight of it, and then for forty-four 
years Pensacola changed hands like a thieves' 
booty. The inhabitants saluted the French flag 
at sunset and pulled a humble forelock to the 
Spanish flag at dawn. It was inconvenient and 
confusing, but no one could complain of a lack 
of variety in life! 

[228] 



OF THE SOUTH 

Then the British, who have a neat habit of 
getting between belligerents and in settling a 
quarrel obtaining the cause of it, captured 
Pensacola for their own and made it the capital 
of British West Florida. It became very 
fashionable and the headquarters of a flourish- 
ing Indian trade under the direction of the 
shrewd and intelligent half-breed, Alexander 
McGillivray, who was chief of the Creeks. 
As far north as the Tennessee River and 
as far east as England and Scotland, the 
threads of Pensacola's commerce linked her 
with the rest of the world. Rich Mr. Panton, 
a London merchant, built a trading post and 
a mansion in the town, and for a while the man- 
ners and fancies of England were aped by the 
settlers. The village, which consisted of "40 
huts, thatched with palmetto leaves" when the 
British took possession, was enlarged and 
squared off into streets and boulevards, forts 
were built, and the inhabitants were beginning 
to believe that the Union Jack was their honest- 
to-goodness symbol of authority when Galvez, 
the Governor of Spanish Louisiana, snatched the 
town back again for Spain. The Pensacolans 
probably dug up their Spanish grammars and 
forgot English — at least in public. It is easy to 
see why all the streets were rechristened. 

[229] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

George street became Palafox, and other Anglo- 
Saxon names gave way to Saragossa, Baylen 
Romana, Barcelona and Tarragona, putting a 
Spanish imprint on what is, after all, a British 
town. 

Andrew Jackson was the last to dip his finger 
into this international mince-pie, and falling into 
the historical habit, he dipped it in, not once, 
but twice. First he drove out the British who 
were profiting by the lax Spanish rule to incite 
the Indians against the brand-new United States 
up north; then, with divine Yankee impartiality 
he turned about and disciplined the Spaniards 
for doing the same thing. And finally, when 
Florida was ceded to the United States in 1821, 
Pensacola became the seat of the provisional 
military government for ten months, and wound 
up her checkered career in a blaze of rather 
temporary but dazzling glory. 

Is it any wonder that excitement and novelty 
have become a habit? I hope that Pensacolans 
will forgive me, but it seemed to me that they 
are fond of a good time, and it would be a pity 
if they were ashamed of the nicest thing about 
them. They like to dance, they like to play 
golf, sail, sv'im and fish ; they like to flirt and to 
go up in ifoplanes. The women are well- 
dressed, for heaven knows there is an audience 

[230] 



OF THE SOUTH 

for them! I was dazzled, on going down to 
dinner at the San Carlos, to see ornamental 
ladies slippered in silver and gold, diaphanous 
with tulle, coiffed with imagination, and bearing 
no single earmark of the provincial. They were 
brides, most of them. Army and Navy brides. 
Their red-cheeked, clean-cut young husbands 
were either attached to the submarine flotilla or 
stationed at Fort Pickens or in training at the 
Naval Aeronautic Station. 

Their presence explained why Hudson Max- 
im's "Defenseless America" has taken the place 
of Gideon's Bibles in every room in the San 
Carlos Hotel! There is no danger of a pacifist 
going to bed in Pensacola with Christian ideas 
of unpreparedness obstructing his intelligence. 
Pensacola has a navy yard, a flying school and a 
fort, and there is a purposeful concentration on 
the black and whiteness of our national unpre- 
paredness — the black to stand for what has not 
been done yet, the white to mean what is being 
done and will be done, in spite of a nation lulled 
to pacifism by waiting too long to fight, in spite 
of the devilish obtuseness of authorities, in spite 
of delays, discouragements and rebuffs. The 
pacifist at the San Carlos who looks for his 
comforting Bible, hoping to misinterpret it be- 
fore he lays him down to sleep, finds "Defense- 

[231] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

less America" bound in red, terrifying, disturb- 
ing and prophetic, to throw him into night- 
marish slumber. I have never seen a Gideon 
Bible which looked as if it might have been 
read, but the Hudson Maxim high explosive in 
my room was thumbed threadbare. (If you 
can mix metaphors like that!) I think the 
revelation shook my faith in spirituality a trifle, 
but it cheered me to think that perhaps a few 
sparks of high purpose had been struck in the 
turning of those pages. At any rate, the book 
was the first indication we had that the peace- 
dove is unpopular at Pensacola. The bird 
which draws all eyes, down there, is a man- 
made monster, lighter than a breath, wide- 
winged. . . . 

But before we glance up into the unnatural 
blue of the Florida sky (I say that instinctively, 
for the sky was not blue at all, but glaring white 
like the inside of a crystal goblet!) — before we 
glance up, I say, at the war-birds, let us focus 
on Pensacola herself. 

With Julian Street, Theophile Gautier, 
Arthur Symons and other delightful celebrities 
who set the fashion in similes, I always think of 
cities as ladies — languorous ladies or bold ones 
or merely stupid wenches with no beauty and no 
brains. Pensacola is the most dangerous sort of 

[232] 



OF THE SOUTH 

flirt. She basks in the warm sun and gentle 
wind for months at a time; fogs drift in from 
the Gulf and veil her bewitchingly ; she is tender 
and sleepy by starlight, frivolous in the morning 
— but always she is lovable. Nearly always! 
She will turn like a fury and smash and destroy 
and annihilate when it pleases her. Then vio- 
lent winds sweep across the city, lifting off roofs, 
snapping trees in two and, as one Pensacolan 
said to me, "scaring the tar out of everybody!" 
A city whose parlour tricks are so maliciously 
unexpected is tinged, for me, at least, with some- 
thing sinister and untrustworthy. When she is 
doing her best to bewitch me, I keep my eye on 
the rosy-hued cumuli banking low on the 
horizon and building towers and pinnacles that 
may rise and obscure the smiling sun. When 
the palm-fronds hang limp and still in the 
breathless quiet of the hot afternoons, I think 
of them torn by the wind into writhing pin- 
wheels, lashed, tortured and drenched. Some- 
where in my subconscious mind, I am suspicious 
and watchful. 

So the Pensacolans must be, for they have 
built their houses as close to the ground as pos- 
sible. The frail wooden shacks along the water- 
front look as if they could be flipped away by 
the wind as easily as a pedestrian's straw hat; 

[233] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

some of them, buffeted by the terrific storms of 
July and September, 1916, lean drunkenly, and 
there are picket fences everywhere which have 
fallen flat on their faces and look as if they 
meant to stay there, like refractory children. 
Living in the shadow of such an inexorable fate 
— for even optimism and the enthusiasm of 
capitalists have failed to stop the Gulf storms 
— makes the people livelier than ever. Like 
Neapolitans, they enjoy living to-day because 
it is not altogether improbable that they will be 
blown to smithereens to-morrow. The surest 
way to enjoy life is to go where nature values it 
lightly. I have never appreciated the gift of 
mere existence more poignantly than I did when 
an earthquake nearly deprived me of it. In 
that violent moment I would have snatched the 
dull routine of endless days out of the jaws of 
hell to treasure forever! In Pensacola they 
have learned that lesson. They trust to luck, 
live close to the ground, and smile. „ . . 

At night Palafox Street is crowded, riff-raff 
and gentry mixing and apparently liking it. A 
steady tide of pedestrians drifts up and down the 
narrow sidewalks or answers the lure (at ten 
cents a lure) of the Movie Theatres, or goes 
to the *'Zoo" to stare at an exhibition of moth- 
eaten snakes and odoriferous trained bears, or 

[234] 



OF THE SOUTH 

takes a shot at a disappearing target in one of 
the clattering shooting galleries on the chance 
of being sober and steady enough to win a nickel 
cigar. Hawkers yell hoarse invitations; you 
catch the alluring tinkle of a distant piano play- 
ing syncopated melodies for dancing sailors; the 
busy little Fords rush up and down always pre- 
tending that it is Broadway. If you are a coun- 
try cousin you stare into Kress's windows and 
admire tinware, ribbon, five-cent lace and ten- 
cent calico, pressed glass, lemon squeezers, 
chromos and clocks. The crowd is colourful 
and picturesque. There are husky young sail- 
ors walking in bashful pairs like Italian 
carabinieri; there are longshoremen, big-handed 
Swedes, taciturn Englishmen, voluble Italians, 
niggers and more niggers — tall ones with little 
bullet heads and flat noses, lanky ones laughing 
liquid contagious laughter, yellow ones and sooty 
ones, jaunty, cheap coons and ragged coons; 
negresses with feathers in their hats and white 
kid shoes; likable fat negresses in inconceivable 
tatters; untidy, down-at-the-heel people and trim 
officers in khaki, marines, Cubans, Japanese, 
pretty girls, tourists, the tag-ends of humanity 
and the show-room pieces, drunks, riff-raff and 
jetsam. 

In the Movie Theatres there are close-packed 

[235] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

perspiring audiences and sobbing organ music 
— "I Hear You Calling Me" on the vox 
humana! Babies, who should have been in bed 
for hours, squawk and squall and bubble; sailors 
giggle and middle-aged citizens watch gravely, 
reading the captions aloud. 

But beyond Palafox Street, the rest of the city 
is dark and quiet. You can walk for blocks and 
hear nothing but the ghostly rattle of the palms, 
see nothing but sober, sedate houses and discreet 
clubs. Architecturally, Pensacola is not exciting 
except for a little Sp^anish baroque church which 
may be new but which looks as old as the world. 
Most of the houses and all of the business build- 
ings were apparently planned according to the 
deadly American system of usefulness before 
beauty, without regard for the landscape, the 
colour of the sky or the permanence of anything. 
Sometimes I wonder why we do not regulate 
civic architecture by law. To encounter rows 
and rows of ugly houses built in the jig-saw man- 
ner and painted a dingy grey or a sulphurish and 
sickening yellow, is cramping to the soul. But 
to encounter them in Western Florida is both 
humiliating and tragic. 

All roads led to the Navy Yard, so we motored 
out there one morning, Allan warning the hotel 
garage that he didn't want a Ford, wouldn't have 

[236] 



OF THE SOUTH 

a Ford, the garage bridling and sending us a 
fashionable relic that rode high on buoyant 
springs. We sat in the lofty and slippery ton- 
neau and rattled loosely like beans in a pod. 
Any slight variation in the surface of the road, 
like a blade of grass or a pebble, bounced us 
skyward. Fortunately, the road was macadam- 
ised except for one stretch, just across the long 
wooden bridge over the Bayou Grande, where 
some niggers, three mules and a ponderous 
steam-roller had created a No-Man's Land with 
the mistaken intention of repairing the road. 
We were constantly in mid-air while we nego- 
tiated the craters, so I have a blurred impression 
of the cross-country approach to the Yard. And 
I found out later that we could have gone quite 
comfortably and cheaply by tram from the 
centre of the city. 

We went first to the old Civil War ruin, 
Barancas, and left the car to climb up into the 
fort and from its high walls to fix the plan of the 
Bay in our mind's retina. We crossed a wooden 
portcullis that bridged a shallow moat and 
entered the fort through a steep underground 
passageway, coming out by the spiny tower of 
the Government wireless station. A lonely boy 
in khaki was on guard-duty there, looking as if 
he would have welcomed a stiff hand-to-hand 

[237] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

fight with almost any variety of enemy — but a 
ferocious one preferred. I suppose soldiers do 
grow tired, now and then, of what is for the 
most part a hypothetical profession. We tried 
to cheer this one by talking in a hopeful way of 
the lively possibility of war with Germany. He 
brightened, but he let us see very plainly that 
he had heard the cry of "Wolf!" too many times 
to take our feeble pipings seriously. 

We leaned on the wall by his side and stared 
out at the Bay. It enters obligingly through a 
narrow mouth so that modern Fort Pickens, on 
the tip of Santa Rosa Island, dominates it easily. 
Then it widens back ten miles to Pensacola, and 
still further on splits like a scorpion's tail into 
two smaller bays, Escambia and St. Mary de 
Galvez. Santa Rosa Island, a narrow sand-strip 
forty-four miles long, locks the harbour away 
from the Gulf. Fort Pickens, the mortar bat- 
tery and quarantine are all out there, and curi- 
ous tourists have to be ferried across from the 
mainland. I am a layman and know nothing 
of these things, but it seemed to me a very 
inconvenient arrangement of fort and barracks 
— the fort on an island, the barracks on the 
mainland and a wide strip of harbour between 
exposed to the fire of enemy ships lying just 
across that narrow bar of sand. I had an un- 

[238] 



OF THE SOUTH 

easy feeling that if Pickens were surprised at 
night, or when the defenders were having aft- 
ernoon tea ashore, getting to the fort would be 
a blighting business. Apparently, all of those 
things had been thought out long before I got 
to Pensacola, for when I put my fear into words 
the fresh-cheeked boy in khaki became hys- 
terical. 

To change the subject, I asked him why 
Pensacola is called the "Deep Water City." He 
controlled his expression long enough to answer, 
"Because the harbour channel is thirty feet deep 
on zero tide," and then leaned against one cor- 
ner of the wireless tower and laughed until he 
cried. 

The brick walls of Barancas rise steeply from 
the grey ruins of the old Media de Luna, the 
half-moon fort built by d'Ariola in 1696. While 
Allan sketched the curious, shallow defences 
and the incomparably white beach which curves 
beyond them, I watched some small boys play- 
ing at mediaeval warfare, two of them barri- 
caded in the fort, the rest swarming with blood- 
thirsty howls (if three very small boys can be 
said to swarm) over the crescent-shaped walls. 

When the sketch was finished we said good- 
bye, I rather stiffly, to the very young soldier, 
and went back to the car. As we bounced on 

[239] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

we saw a great white bird — not the dove of 
peace — suddenly thrust its nose skyward and 
with widespread wings wheel and dip over the 
glittering harbour. 

The Yard and the aeronautic station are half- 
way between the entrance to the Bay and Pensa- 
cola, facing Santa Rosa Island across the wide 
strip of water. A sentry deprived us of our 
camera at the gate, but didn't insist on our being 
blindfolded, which seemed rather inconsistent 
considering the accuracy of optic photography. 
A real spy doesn't fix a tripod on the periscope 
of a submarine and prance about taking photo- 
graphs in full view of officers and crew. Nor 
does he spread his maps and foul plans on the 
parade-ground of a Navy Yard for the amuse- 
ment of nursemaids and babies in perambulators. 
Our idea of a spy is one who surrenders his 
camera at the gate, swaps a yarn with the sentry, 
and then saunters leisurely about puffing a ciga- 
rette and endearing himself to every one from 
the Commandant to the Admiral's pet dog — 
such an artless, winning creature that no one 
can resist telling him everything he wants to 
know, leading him ever3rwhere he wants to go. 
And all the while he looks and looks and sees 
and sees. . . . 

The Zlavy Yard at Pensacola encloses both 

[240] 




A GRKAI FLOATING HANGAR, TRLLY MAGNIFICENT IN 
PROPORTION 



OF THE SOUTH 

the naval and aeronautic stations. When we 
were there, all traces of the destructive July and 
September storms had been wiped out. Except 
for the wharves, which had not been rebuilt, 
things were in spick-and-span condition. The 
hangars and machine shops are near the water 
and connected with it by wide concrete 
"beaches," so that the machines can be wheeled 
out of the sheds and floated, if I may put it that 
way, at their own front door. The offices and 
quarters are further back — all square, white, 
unbeautiful buildings. And there are the usual 
patches of discouraged grass and shiny mounds 
of cannon balls. In the harbour out be- 
yond, the Columbia, the Tallahassee and the 
McDonough were "mothering" little strings 
of almost invisible submarines. From the top 
of what looked like a battleship's skeleton mast 
a signal flag announced "Flying to-day." And 
the air was full of the mysterious and unfamiliar 
hum of giant wings. We felt that we were in 
the midst of a very important and vital activity, 
for the men who are developing naval aero- 
nautics at Pensacola are carrying on experiments 
which make them the focus of national atten- 
tion. 

As soon as I passed the Yard gate I began to 
ask questions, remembering what I had been 

[241] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

told before I left New York: "Find out what 
they are doing down in Pensacola. Find out 
how they are doing it. We may be going to 
have a war, you know." I had not forgotten. I 
faced the Commandant in his office and, pretend- 
ing that I was a composite American, rather put 
it up to him. 

"Well," I said, fixing him with my composite 
gaze, "what are you doing down here?" 

Instead of taking me by the scrufif of my neck 
and putting my composite person outside the 
door, the Commandant answered very seriously 
with another question, "Do you really want to 
know?" 

"I do." 

"How much do you know already?" 

"Nothing." Which wasn't exactly cornposite, 
but was at least honest. 

The Commandant smiled and commissioned 
a patient aviator to show us over the Yard and 
to explain everything lucidly and repeatedly. 
The aviator told us, among other things, that 
the school at Pensacola is the only one in the 
United States for the training of officers and men 
in the naval aeronautic service. This was in 
February, 19 17, and the school was working 
to the limit of its capacity, with full classes not 
only of naval and marine officers and men, but 

[242] 



OF THE SOUTH 

naval militia and coast-guard officers and men 
who are received every three months. Thirteen 
lieutenants (junior grade), one lieutenant, two 
marine corps captains and an ensign — seventeen 
men in all — were in training. There were only 
five senior flight instructors. Considering that 
other first-class powers have from two thousand 
to ten thousand aviators, and that there were 
less than two hundred trained aviators in the 
United States Army and Navy at that time, it is 
easy to see that such slow training of personnel 
and instructors has held back progress in the 
building of the national aeronautic service. The 
need is not so much to get more aircraft, but to 
equip men to handle them. And for every 
anxious question of mine, the patient aviator had 
one answer, "Universal training! When we 
have universal training, the problem of men and 
instructors will be solved. In the meantime, the 
aeronautic station at Pensacola is going ahead 
as fast as it can. As fast, remember, as it can!" 
In working with the fleet, naval aircraft have 
four distinct, invaluable duties — to scout from 
ships at sea, to scout off shore from coastal sta- 
tions, to "spot" and to engage in oflfensive opera- 
tions against enemy 'planes or against enemy 
ships and stations. There, and on the first line 
of defence, they are of inestimable value. Eng- 

[243] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

land had not been slow to realise, to quote Mr. 
Balfour, that "the time is here when command 
of the sea will be of no value to Great Britain 
without corresponding command of the air." 
And Lord Charles Beresford made an even 
stronger statement when he said that "the time 
is here when the air-service of Great Britain 
will be more vital for her safety than her Army 
and her Navy combined." General Petain has 
said, "I see France in the near future with fifty 
thousand aeroplanes." And Rear-Admiral 
Peary states that "if we are to have a real de- 
fence we must begin developing our aerial 
strength now and push it unsparingly. We shall 
not have started on a proper pace of develop- 
ment of this vital arm until we are spending not 
less than fifty million dollars a year." 

As I trotted at the heels of the communicative 
aviator at Pensacola, he explained to me bitterly 
and explicitly why America is so overwhelm- 
ingly outclassed by Europe in the matters of 
naval aeronautics. He told me, among other 
things, that there was not a single anti-aircraft 
unit in the United States. Up to that time there 
had been no practice in the handling of aero- 
plane guns at Pensacola, nor had a single gun 
been mounted on an aeroplane. There had been 
no practice in locating submarines, torpedoes 

[244] 



OF THE SOUTH 

and mines. Again lack of men and material! 
There was only one kite balloon, the ''aerial 
eye" of the forts and field artillery batteries, in 
the United States, nor were there any small 
dirigible balloons for coast patrol and submarine 
hunting. 

"And do you remember," the aviator said, 
"that it was a Zeppelin which secured co-opera- 
tion for the German fleet at the battle of Jutland, 
and that the British fleet was warned of the ap- 
proach of the Germans by an aeroplane piloted 
by Flight Lieutenant Rutland from the aero- 
plane mother ship Engadine? Did you know 
that only two of our ships, the Seattle and the 
North Carolina, are equipped with seaplanes 
and the catapult launching device which per- 
mits scouting away from the shore station?" 

I did not know. And it had to be explained 
to me that the "catapult" is a pneumatic ram 
which gives the seaplane the necessary velocity 
to leave the stern of the ship and to take the 
air. But it was hard for me to believe that the 
development of the seaplane in America has 
been anything but miraculous, when I saw the 
machines in the hangars and in the sky at Pensa- 
cola. It was hard to be pessimistic, even though 
the war-cloud was hanging low over the coun- 
try, in the presence of so much activity and genu- 

[245] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

ine enthusiasm. We went into the hangars, 
where there were twenty-five little Curtiss school 
machines with flirty tails, two Thomas aero- 
planes that looked like blunt-nosed dragon-flies, 
a Martin, five big Sturtevants, a "scouting" Cur- 
tiss, a three hundred horse-power Gallaudet with 
the drivers' seats far forward so that the pilots 
ride like seasprites on a dolphin's nose, four Bur- 
gesses and a Navy type, designed by Naval Con- 
structor H. C. Richardson. Another Navy 
type, a school machine, designed by Lieutenant 
E. O. McDonnell, was in the process of con- 
struction. 

I was allowed to go close to the beautiful 
monsters while they were being "curried" by 
mechanics, and even to put my hand on their 
polished sides and to touch the tips of their out- 
spread wings. Each one had its "record." This 
one had always been a "Jonah," that one had 
made an altitude record; this one, with Lieu- 
tenant Mcllvaine, had been lost in the fog the 
day before and for nine hours had drifted like 
a lame duck on Pensacola Bay. Some of them 
had settled on their tails like those fragile flies 
whose front legs are out of all proportion to 
their hind legs. They reared their noses heaven- 
ward. The motors were silent, and the devoted 
mechanics, aeronautic grooms, polished and 

[246] 



OF THE SOUTH 

rubbed and did mysterious, deeply intelligent 
things with the complex, delicate veins and 
arteries that move the inert body with pulsating 
life and lift it out of the water to the topmost 
skies. 

The aviator told me that a student's first flight 
without the instructor proves his sense of bal- 
ance and determines whether or not he will be 
a successful pilot. He may do very well as long 
as he is not alone, but the "feel" of a machine is 
different when it carries only one passenger, and 
the result is confusing; so confusing, in fact, 
that the hopeful student, even if he escapes in- 
tact, is not always granted his pilot's degree and 
has to choose a more stationary branch of the 
service. It is not a question of intelligence or of 
personal courage, but depends rather on how 
good an equilibrist one happens to be. 

'Tt is a magnificent sensation," the aviator 
told me, "to feel yourself actually flying, to see 
the earth and sea dropping away from under 
you, diminishing dizzily like sea and earth seen 
through the wrong end of a telescope. The 
world looks as flat and featureless as a pricked 
bubble — it just collapses. And there you are, 
absolutely not afraid, suspended in the air like 
a lazy buzzard coasting on the wind. More 
than anything else, it is freedom. You are alone 

[247] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

with the sky and the machine, and somehow the 
petty things of the world get left behind. I tell 
you," he assured me, fixing me with his eyes, 
"it's great! It gets into your blood." 

It was a breathlessly calm day and there was 
an animated bustle along the broad glaring- 
white concrete water-front before the hangars. 
With the aviator, who had witnessed the 
spectacle more times than he could remember, 
we stood in the hot sun for over an hour to watch 
a long line of machines, suddenly shaken by 
astounding explosions, leap away from shore, 
skim the surface of the water for a few hundred 
yards and then rise steadily higher and higher 
into the sky. No matter how often the miracle 
was repeated, I was as excited as a child with a 
toy balloon. I had an uncontrollable desire to 
cheer, to clap, to flutter a handkerchief. 

But a memory restrained me. Once in Lon- 
don I had been the only human being in an im- 
mense crowd to cheer King George. I was 
standing on the edge of the curb, firmly wedged 
from behind by a British mob and still more 
firmly wedged from before by a stolid and 
immovable line of British police. I had 
never seen a king. Once in Rome I had 
glimpsed the shiny berretta of Vittorio Em- 
manuele, who was apparently sitting on the 

[248] 



OF THE SOUTH 

floor of his carriage as he drove in the 
Villa Borghese. But you could hardly call a 
berretta a whole king. It was quite a different 
matter in London, for the King was there to be 
seen, and I, with my chin resting on a Bobby's 
broad shoulder, waited only to see him. The 
great state coach rattled down the street slowly 
with a lumbersome, unwieldy majesty and 
pomp. Hats were lifted in respectful silence. 
I remember that my heart beat as the prancing 
horses came abreast. Then I caught sight of the 
familiar profile of the King, and something in- 
explicable and unrecognisable rose in me from 
the mysterious depths of my being. I had to 
cheer. So I cheered. My voice rose above the 
British silence, the British decorum, like an 
hysterical and blood-curdling Indian whoop. 
The King and several thousand people turned 
astonished eyes on me; the long row of police- 
men stiffened. Then the coach creaked and 
rattled past, turned at right angles into St. 
James, and the incident was closed. I had 
cheered. . . . 

At Pensacola I suppressed the impulse stern- 
ly, for I could not have cheered aviators who 
take the glorious business of flying as uncon- 
cernedly as the English take the historical busi- 
ness of kings. 

[249] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

Mechanics wearing hip-length rubber boots 
splashed out into the shallow water to hold the 
machines in leash and to preserve the exact bal- 
ance of the great wings while the pilots scram- 
bled aboard. Then suddenly, with a staccato 
roar and a blinding shower of spray, they were 
off! Then they were clear of the water, skim- 
ming just above it with taut wings. Then up 
with a graceful swoop, up and up and still up 
— the sun glinting along the planes. They shot 
away from the beach one after the other until 
the sky was full of dipping, wheeling monsters. 
They poked their blunt noses straight at the sun, 
climbing until the throbbing of their engines 
came to us as faint as a pulse beat. They passed 
and repassed each other across the face of the 
blazing sky. They coasted down to the water 
again with subdued hums like heavy bumble- 
bees swollen to nightmarish proportions. 

Having likened them to every winged thing 
but the common house-fly, my superlatives 
sizzled ofi into speechlessness, and the aviator, 
greatly relieved, took me over to see the 
dirigible. It had just arrived and had been tied 
up in its kennel, looking very much like a long, 
yellow dachshund. It was squashy and soft to 
the prodding finger, and I was surprised to 
find myself on intimate terms with a dirigible 

[250] 



OF THE SOUTH 

and saying that it felt like a 'Very old orange." 
As it is the dirigible, I was snubbed for being 
facetious and made to feel that I had taken 
liberties with a divinity. Yet I suppose Sieg- 
fried might have grown used to the dragon in 
time! The dirigible's kennel, to tell the truth, 
was more impressive — a great floating hangar, 
truly magnificent in proportion, which can be 
towed to sea and so turned with the wind that 
the dirigible is able to leave its shelter and to 
re-enter it with the utmost facility. Taking a 
dirigible to sea would be as exciting, it seems to 
me, as giving a dinotherium a ride in a swan 
boat I 

We walked gingerly about the recumbent 
monster, stepping over ropes, chains and snake- 
like tubings, vaguely fearful in the unfamiliar 
atmosphere of making some misstep which 
would precipitate a calamity. The vast interior 
of the hangar was as cool and shadowy as a 
cathedral transept. Only where the great can- 
vas curtains of the entrance were looped back, 
a patch of hot, noon sky blazed magnificently. 

Friends "with the submarines" were expect- 
ing us for lunch, and we had been told that the 
Admiral's "barge" would be waiting for us at 
the Yard wharf to take us out to the Columbia. 
Already little chills of excitement were creep- 

[251] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

ing over me at the thought of having lunch with 
an admiral and an indefinite number of "other 
officers." While Allan and the aviator were 
examining the dirigible's car I slipped behind 
a convenient bulge in the creature's cigar-shaped 
anatomy, and squinting into a pocket mirror 
which is about the size of a fifty cent 
piece and just as successful in reflecting me, I 
powdered my nose and settled my hat at a more 
rakish angle. When I emerged looking, as 
Allan instantly remarked, like a whited 
sepulchre, it was time to go in search of the 
"barge." So we said good-bye to the patient 
aviator, insinuating a few last questions into our 
gratitude, and hurried away to keep our 
rendezvous at the wharf. 

The "barge," of course, was a shining, brass- 
trimmed nifty horse-power motor-boat. It shot 
away from the Yard wharf, bearing us toward 
lunch with a delicious, exhilarating leap, 
cutting a path like the churning wake of an in- 
jured sperm-whale across the iharbour. The 
soles of our feet tickled responsively to the 
shivering vibrations of the engine. We passed 
close to the rakish destroyer McDonough and 
had a blurred glimpse of a half a dozen sub- 
marines lying side by side and swarming with 
men. Overhead the great white birds still 

[252] 



OF THE SOUTH 

circled and dipped, still coasted nose-down to 
the water or shot into the face of the sun. Real 
birds, white-breasted, hovered over the warships 
and wheeled in the wake of a big grey liner 
which steamed slowly towards the open sea. 
There was a gay flutter of flags, — brilliant spots 
of colour against the blue and white of the 
world. A magnificent activity everywhere — 
little spurts of grey smoke and the long wisps of 
dazzling steam snatched skyward and the glitter- 
ing path of fast launches passing and repassing 
across the shining water. A submarine, like a 
thin, black pencil, detached itself from the others 
and moved slowly up the harbour, the crew 
walking along its narrow spine like men on a 
raft Looking back, we could see the floating 
hangar and the blazing white of the Yard build- 
ings. It was a fine moment. Before us lay a 
pageant of American preparedness on the sea 
and in the air, and we forgot carping criticisms, 
odious comparisons and doleful forebodings 
long enough to be proud of our country. The 
spectacle at Pensacola was both creditable and 
impressive. We find so much to depreciate in 
these days of preparation and anxiety that any 
real emotion, any thrill of genuine enthusiasm, 
is cause for rejoicing. 

At lunch there was very little talk of war, 

[253] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

and that, I suppose, was as it should be. We 
spoke of the U-53, and the Admiral showed us 
some photographs of the crafty and daring 
undersea boat which he had had framed and 
hung on the walls of the mess room. I am won- 
dering whether they are still there. I fancy they 
are, for there is nothing a good fighter admires 
more than a "sporting" enemy, and the U-53 
was all of that. 

We did not know that while we were enjoy- 
ing the unaffected and delightful hospitality of 
the Columbia, word had been flashed all over 
the United States that Germany intended to 
carry on her submarine warfare. The Admiral 
and every one at the luncheon table but our- 
selves knew that the war-cloud had rolled up 
over the horizon and had spread like a menacing 
shadow over America. They knew that the 
dramatic spectacle of submarines, seaplanes and 
warships all about us was soon destined to be- 
come something more than a dramatic pageant. 
Yet our talk dealt pleasantly with other things. 
It was not until we got back to Pensacola, late 
that afternoon, that we found out for ourselves. 
Allan snatched a paper from a howling dervish 
of a newsboy who flashed by shrieking, "War 
Extra!" and we stood on the sidewalk to read 

[254] 



OF THE SOUTH 

the glaring headlines. ... It had come, then, 
and so soon! 

That night, as if the news had stirred heaven 
and earth, a thunderstorm roared across the 
Gulf. The first blinding flash of lightning woke 
us. We heard thick splatters of rain, and a 
thunder clap which shook the San Carlos like 
an earthquake. Then the wind came, with a 
thin and querulous whine that rose in pitch, in- 
tensified, developed into a shriek. Chairs and 
tables on the open-air terrace down below turned 
over with a clatter. We heard bellboys and 
night watchmen scurrying back and forth to the 
rescue. Doors slammed and rattled, and the 
terrific impact of the wind drove the rain in solid 
sheets against our windows. I cowered under 
the bedclothes and called into the next room to 
Allan. 

"Are you awake?" 

"I am." 

"What on earth is the time?" 

He waited until the theatrical lightning had 
shown him the face of his watch. 

"Four o'clock." 

"Are we going to take the six o'clock train to 
Mobile?" I howled. 

"If we're still alive." 

Then we both crawled under our pillows and 

[255] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

tried to shut out the terrifying reverberations of 
the implacable wind. When we woke it was 
nine o'clock, and the sun was shining crisply. 
The thermometer had fallen to twenty-two de- 
grees and the radiator was blowing steam bub- 
bles in an unaccustomed effort to heat the San 
Carlos. We took a later train to Mobile, leaving 
Pensacola ashiver in the grip of an icy frost. 
But we were still alive. 



1256} 



CHAPTER X 

A DAY IN MOBILE AND ON TO NEW ORLEANS 

WHERE WE MEET A VERY CAPABLE 

YOUNG WOMAN 

"To Jean Baptiste Le Moyne 

Sieur de Bienville 

^Native of Montreal, Canada, 

Naval Officer 

Of France 

Governor of Louisiana 

And Founder of the First Capital 

Mobile, 

IJII 

Born 1680— Died 1 768 

With the Genius to Create an Empire 

And the Courage to Maintain It 

Patient Amid Faction and Successful Even 

In Defeat 

He Brought His Settlement 

The Prosperity of True Civilization 

And the Happiness of Real Christianity. 

He Who Founds a City Builds Himself 

A Life-Long Monument." 

In this fashion Mobile expresses her gratitude 
to the Canadian who immortalised himself in 

[257] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

the founding of both New Orleans and Mobile, 
and in putting the Latin imprint upon the two 
cities guaranteed their charm for all time. You 
may see the generous inscription in Bienville 
Square, where the citizens of Mobile have raised 
a granite cross to the great Frenchman, proving 
themselves more appreciative than New 
Orleans, who has so far neglected to honour 
Bienville's memory that only one small street 
has been named after him in the Creole City. 
Mobile dedicated its most beautiful square, a 
magnificent grove of live oaks in the centre of 
the city, to the man who followed in the foot- 
steps of La Salle and Iberville and not only 
carried the French flag to the very mouth of the 
Mississippi, but planted it as far east as Florida. 
Mobile was the capital of French Louisiana 
until 1723, and thereafter the city changed hands 
with the dizzy speed of a juggler's ball, sharing 
the fate of Pensacola and New Orleans, and 
passing from the French to the English, from 
the English to the Spanish, and finally casting 
in its lot with the new and untried United States. 
The colonists had very little to say as to what 
their allegiance should be, for the political in- 
triguers of Europe pulled the wires that made 
Louisiana a French, English or Spanish prov- 
ince. Boundaries were elastic, flags were hoisted 

[258] 



OF THE SOUTH 

only to be hauled down again, and the stamp 
of three nationalities was put upon the people 
who had ventured into the uncharted wilderness 
in search of religious freedom, riches or the mad- 
dest, boldest adventure. Mobile profited by her 
cosmopolitan experience, and like a woman who 
has lived in many countries and who speaks 
many languages, the city has emerged from her 
varied past socially expert. 

The softness of the name. Mobile, Maubila 
of the Spaniards, is both gracious and dis- 
tinguished. Such a combination of phonetics as 
"Mobile, Alabama" could not belong to a lout- 
ish city. And indeed one must dust ofif one's 
modern carelessness before one enters the 
fashionable Mobile's drawing room. She is an 
old woman now but she is a great personality, 
a creature of distinction, still intolerant of the 
leisurely and careless society of to-day. In the 
brilliant ante-bellum days she filled her salons 
with governors and generals, European nobles, 
rich planters, statesmen and merchants from 
Charleston and Boston, Liverpool, London, 
Glasgow and New York. And because she was 
witty, beautiful and aristocratic, she attracted 
men and women like herself and created around 
herself a sort of social glamour, a charm that 
was both rare and distinguished, and won her a 

[25.9] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

place with Charleston and Richmond in the 
social sun. She became so finished a product 
that one of her daughters, Madame Octavis 
Walton Levert, was presented to Queen Victoria 
at a "special drawing room" at a time when 
Americans were still popularly supposed to be 
savages and to live in wigwams. So it is not 
altogether improbable that Madame Levert 
placed the first bomb under the exalted edifice 
of British antagonism and helped to open the 
way to a mutual Anglo-American social under- 
standing. 

We came to Mobile from Pensacola across a 
lovely slice of Alabama that has been rudely 
devastated by the 1916 storms. Trees were 
snapped ofT two or three feet from the ground 
and thrown forward on their faces in an atti- 
tude of Moslem prayer. The hurricanes left 
a wide trail of these prostrated pines and oaks, 
and no one seems to have taken the trouble to 
haul away the dead wood or to prop up the 
over-zealous but still living worshippers. But 
the country is rich in timber, and where there 
is a surplus of anything there is always small 
regard for the source of supply. If the Italians 
of Tuscany could only see that wasted firewood! 
Where kindling wood is worth its weight in 
gold, a whole forest of decaying trees would 

[260] 



OF THE SOUTH 

cause the mouth to water — Like Millet"'s 
canvas, "The Reapers," which always makes my 
back ache if I look at it too long, the snapped- 
off pines along the way to Mobile are so 
eternally bent over in an awkward attitude of 
prayer that I groaned out of sympathy. 

And again the character of the country had 
mysteriously changed as if man-made boundary 
lines could transform the colour of the earth, 
the smell of the air and the very characteristics 
of the people. Alabama was not Alabama until 
after the Louisiana Purchase, but it is as dif- 
ferent from Florida on the one hand and 
Louisiana on the other as black is from white. 
I have never understood why the crossing of a 
surveyed line should take one from the racial 
and geographical characteristics of one State 
into those of another, why Connecticut is so un- 
like Rhode Island, why Vermont is so entirely 
different from New Hampshire and so on, ad 
infinitum. Florida is still Spanish and Louisi- 
ana is French, while Alabama, set exactly be- 
tween the two and only separated from them by 
an imaginary line and a different colour on the 
map, is wholly American. Alabama still be- 
longs to a social past that was characteristically 
American in spite of, or perhaps because of its 
cosmopolitanism. It seemed to us that even 

[261] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

the soil changed as soon as we crossed the border, 
for the foothills of the Appalachians pour down 
to the Gulf, lifting the coast line of Alabama out 
of the water and mercifully ridding it of salt 
marshes and swampy bayous. 

In Florida we had touched upon the tropics, 
passing through an endless waste of oak and 
cypress forest sunk to its knees in water and 
clogged with vine and moss. A Martian must 
see Florida as a beautiful green land pitted with 
lakes and laced with rivers, encroached upon by 
the waters of both the Atlantic Ocean and the 
Gulf of Mexico. Wherever Florida rears her- 
self out of the swamps there is a wealth of bloom 
and the moist, damp air is filled with the spicy 
sweetness of green bay and orange, live oak, 
holly, oleanders and magnolia, high reeds and 
bull-briers, sedge and palmetto, Spanish dagger 
and cypress. The country is grey and dusty in 
the early winter, and for that reason perhaps a 
disappointment to those travellers who leave the 
North too soon and cannot wait in Florida for 
the miraculous flowering of bushes and trees 
that makes the semi-tropical spring an ecstatic 
symphony of sweet odours and blazing colours. 
All the way down the Atlantic coast the winter 
landscape is a dusty, cinder-grey procession of 
moss-choked swamps and brittle palmetto scrub, 

[262] 



OF THE SOUTH 

and there is no variation in the deadly monotony 
except where the hills of Tallahassee rise mys- 
teriously out of the water-soaked plain 

We did not see the azaleas in Mobile, for they 
bloom towards the end of February and, with 
our usual poor luck, we had come too soon for 
their blooming. The azaleas of Mobile do not 
grow in pots to live and die during Easter week, 
like our Northern azaleas. They are not decked 
out with blue bows and crinkly tissue paper for 
exhibition on the family piano. In Mobile, an 
azalea is a tree, often growing as high as the 
Italian camellia and just as richly starred with 
blossoms. I am repeating, dear Reader, what I 
heard in Mobile, and you need not put your 
finger on the side of your nose and accuse me 
of having a microscopic eye, like a horse's, 
which enlarges everything it sees. 

The only flowers I saw in Mobile were in 
the florist shop windows, for nothing but a 
Christmas tree could have survived the bitter 
cold. There were undoubtedly some bitter 
tragedies in the great orange groves and truck 
gardens of Mobile County. Even the hardy 
Satsuma trees must have shivered in the icy wind 
that tore across Alabama from the North. 

Travelling is a vicarious enjoyment unless cli- 
mate and scenery are both guaranteed in ad- 

[263] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

vance. Mobile advertises a medium tempera- 
ture and states positively that muslin in vv^inter 
and furs in summer are the usual thing on Mo- 
bile Bay. And it must have been that we are 
hoodoos, for Mobile is strictly truthful about 
everything else, even stretching a point to assure 
the fisherman who goes to Coden or to Dau- 
phine Island for '^big game" fish that if tarpon 
and crevallier aren't biting well, John Rolston 
of Rolston's Hotel will tell him the strict truth. 
This, from a man who rents launches, bait and 
tackle, is the sort of integrity that touches the 
heart. 

But the inhabitants of Mobile apparently live 
under a popular misapprehension as to the 
weather, for they were not prepared for the 
antics of the thermometer and went chattering 
about the city wrapped to the tips of their blue 
noses in woollen mufflers. Our blood had ad- 
justed itself to tropical heat in Pensacola and, 
taken by surprise, refused to meet the situation. 
There is nothing on earth more depressing than 
being too cold unless it is being too hot! And 
in Mobile I was decidedly too cold. Time and 
time again we tucked ourselves into the revolv- 
ing front doors of the Battle House and tried to 
brave the frosty wind, each time making the 
complete revolution and spinning back into the 

[264] 



OF THE SOUTH 

warm lobby again, baffled and beaten. I had 
come to Mobile with romantic intentions, but 
they were nipped in the bud; I had wanted to 
make a sentimental pilgrimage to Augusta Jane 
Evan's home, because I had read "St. Elmo" 
and "Tales of the Alamo" when I should have 
been reading Hans Christian Andersen, and I 
owed Augusta Jane Evans a debt of gratitude 
for stolen sweets. I had wanted to pay humble 
tribute to Joseph Jefferson's rare and gentle art 
and in looking at his Mobile home to utter a 
little prayer of thankfulness for the legend of 
Rip Van Winkle and for Jefferson's interpreta- 
tion of it. Jefferson opened the magic door of 
the theatre to me. "Rip Van Winkle" was my 
first play, and I can remember to this day how 
I wept for Rip's lost youth and the tragedy of 
his return from sleep. In those days I could 
weep at the spectacle of age because I was so 
immune from it myself. But now I am twenty- 
seven and the gibbering monster is at hand al- 
ready, strangely transformed and glorified, as 
welcome as Rip himself would be. 

Jefferson appeared in amateur theatricals at 
the Old Mobile Theater when he was a little 
boy, and the city has been grateful enough to 
the lovable stroller to place a tablet on his home, 
paying tribute to a "legal vagabond" as if he 

[26r>] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

were a general, an admiral or a millionaire 
philanthropist. It is not often that cities honour 
their players, preferring to raise monuments to 
more concrete benefactors and forgetting the 
inestimable debt humanity owes to those gra- 
cious men and women who have the gift of tears 
and laughter. 

We finally did leave our hotel and ran brisk- 
ly around the corner to Bienville Square and 
up and down Government Street once or twice, 
battling our way against the tempestuous wind 
with our heads down and our eyes shut. We 
fought valiantly to do our duty by Mobile, for 
it is in the spirit of the place to ward off defeat 
with one's dying breath. De Soto set the fashion 
by battling furiously with Tuscaloosa's warriors 
in the old Maubila; Andrew Jackson fanned 
the flame by defeating the British and their 
Indian allies under Colonel Nichols in 1814, 
and during the Civil War Admiral Farragut, 
sailing up Mobile Bay lashed to the mast of his 
ohip like a modern Ulysses, cried, "Damn the 
mines!" and landed at South End, safe and 
sound. But it was hard to subdue the fighting 
spirit of aristocratic Mobile. After Farragut 
had captured Fort Morgan, the city boiled and 
bubbled with rebellion for a year. The last 
battle of the Civil War took place just outside 

[266] 




smi-'S FROM lill'. MIIXICAX CilLF AND Till-, tAKlHHi:A\ 



OF THE SOUTH 

Mobile at Blakely on Sunday afternoon, April 
9, 1865, several hours after Lee had surrendered. 
So that Lee's army really struck the penultimate 
blow for the flag of the Confederacy. And when 
the last futile hope had died, the poet-priest of 
the South, Father Ryan, voiced the tragic de- 
spair of the conquered people: 

"Furl that banner, softly, slowly. 
Treat it gently — it is holy — 
For it droops above the dead. 
Touch it not — unfold it never, 
Let it droop there, furled forever, 
For its people's hopes are dead." 

Father Ryan was wrong, for hope is imperish- 
able. The Confederate flag was indeed furled 
forever, but another flag floats bravely above 
the Confederate dead and Mobile has just hon- 
oured one of her sons who died for it at Vera 
Cruz in 1914. Esau Frohlichstein was the name 
of the Mobile boy who followed the Stars and 
Stripes into the Mexican town, and you may 
see the tablet to his memory in Fearn Way. 

As we approached Mobile from Pensacola 
our train had skirted the river front, passing a 
beautiful procession of large schooners from the 
Mexican Gulf and the Caribbean Sea. They 
rode at anchor in the centre of the yellow stream, 

[267] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

their spars and masts rimmed magnificently with 
the crisp winter sunlight. It seemed to us that 
there were more sailing vessels than there were 
steamers in the port, and it cheered us enor- 
mously to think that the four-masted and five- 
masted merchantman has not vanished entirely 
from the high seas. The great ships carry lum- 
ber and coal to small ports in the far South. 
Long life to them and to their masters and to 
their crews! We saluted them once more as 
our train drew out of Mobile again, lifting our 
hats figuratively to their beauty and registering 
a vow to return to Mobile in the azalea season 
when the city will have taken off her woollen 
mufflers and put on muslin again. 

We were not in New Orleans during the 
Carnival week, and I am not altogether sorry. 
When we were there, the Creole City had not 
put on her cap and bells to romp with Comus, 
Momus and Proteus. She had not hung in- 
candescent bulbs about her beautiful neck or 
swathed herself in flags and bunting. Where 
most travellers see her rollicking behind a paper- 
cambric mask and a shapeless domino, we saw 
her in her least self-conscious and most gracious 
mood. She was indifferent to our tourist curi- 
osity, but tender when she found that we had 
come to her as lovers. 

[268] 



OF THE SOUTH 

We had the vieux carre pretty much to our- 
selves, and there, in the twisted, narrow old 
streets we encountered the real New Orleans. 
Modern New Orleans, who lives, officially, on 
the other side of Canal Street in the American 
quarter, insists that the real New Orleans is a 
business woman pure and simple, a creature of 
brains and ability, who wears starched shirt- 
waists and flat-heeled shoes, and who would 
rather pound a typewriter than play an old- 
fashioned love song on the family piano. But 
we knew better. We discovered, as all true 
lovers of New Orleans do sooner or later, that 
the delectable creature leads a double life. 

The scandal troubles the dweller in New 
Orleans; he tries to hide it from you. Heaven 
knows why. Probably because he is convinced 
that such an irregularity in the city's life, if it 
were generally known, might injure her busi- 
ness standing, he keeps it dark. For the dweller 
in New Orleans is more interested in the city's 
present and future prosperity than in the most 
alluring and mendacious stories of her past. He 
wants you to think of her as a business woman, 
and he doesn't care a hang whether you are 
2?sthetically upset by the ink-stains on her 
lovely fingertips, or the soot on the end of her 
delightful nose. He leads you at great length 

[269] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

and with some ostentation through Canal Street 
and points out the big department stores with 
their smart window displays and their revolving 
doors sucking in the tide of women shoppers as 
whirlpools gobble jetsam. He shows you the 
impressive Moving Picture theatres built to ac- 
commodate opera-size audiences and serving 
celluloid dramas to the accompaniment of 
churchly organ music. 

He takes you into the Grunewald Hotel and, 
steering you with an expert and accustomed 
hand through the mobs in the gilt and marble 
lobby, dives with you into the Cave, an artificial 
Paradise for those modern spirits who prefer to 
eat in the dark, who really like the ukelele and 
the big bass drum, and who enjoy that sort of 
vaudeville which encroaches upon the dining- 
room table. 

To further impress you, if you are inclined to 
doubt Miss New Orleans' up-to-dateness, he 
dines with you in the scented magnificence of 
the St. Charles or at Kolb's, a German restaurant 
in St. Charles Street where Alt Heidelberg is 
reconstructed to suit American taste and where 
nickel-topped steins, china pipes, oak furniture, 
beamed ceilings and Swiss waiters are calculated 
to throw you into a German state of mind. If 
this is a subtle propaganda, there was something 

[270] 



OF THE SOUTH 

wrong with the artificial atmosphere when we 
were there, for the big, smoke-clouded dining- 
room was full of Americans reading the latest 
War Extras and taking the Times-Picayune's 
incendiary editorials and fiery anti-Teutonism 
together with their sauerkraut und bier. 

And as for us, we ordered Frau Kolb's own 
particular "fried chicken Southern style" and 
ate it with relish while we discussed what 
America would do to the Horrible Hun when 
she finally woke from her lethargy and gath- 
ered herself together. 

Inside, an atmosphere redolent of the new 
Germany, an American interpretation, by Ger- 
mans, of the Hofbrauhaus; outside, war extras 
still limp and wet from the press, selling like hot 
cakes! The indescribably hoarse shouts of the 
newsboys drifted in to us and made strange dis- 
cords with the steady flow of German that 
poured out of the swinging, eternally banging 
kitchen doors! 

When I had finished the delectable fried 
chicken, a fried chicken worthy of the best 
Southern culinary traditions, a fried chicken 
worthy of a Creole mammy, I asked the Swiss 
waiter whether Frau Kolb had prepared the 
dish herself. I was told that her recipe had 
passed from chef to chef of the establishment, 

[271] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

but that Frau Kolb had retired from the activi- 
ties of the restaurant kitchens. 

The dweller in New Orleans, still fearful that 
you may have discovered the scandal in New 
Orleans' life and feeling that he must entertain 
you before he can satisfy the desire of his heart 
and tell you of his sweetheart's business ability, 
proceeds to entertain you, as he does everything, 
lavishly. For the dweller in New Orleans, more 
than any man in the world except perhaps the 
New Yorker, opens his pocket-book as well as his 
heart to the stranger. In him the traditional 
hospitality of the South is exaggerated tenfold; 
he comes of a long ancestry of reckless, spend- 
thrift, thoroughly generous and high-spirited 
men who drank, loved, fought, prayed and died 
with open-handed generosity. It is in his blood 
to share his pleasures and to send the traveller 
away with his pockets, his handbag, his trunk, 
his hands and even the crown of his hat 
crammed with gifts. 

For what other purpose was the delectable 
praline, that sugar-cane and pecan concoction 
of surpassing delicacy and diabolical temptation, 
invented save to ravish the soul of the visitor? 
I was never able to pass a praline shop without 
stopping to buy one of the big candies that look 
so much like Spanish doubloons and taste like 

[272] 



OF THE SOUTH 

something one might buy in a candy store in 
Paradise. They were packed for shipment in 
ornamental boxes; by simply writing the ad- 
dress of the "loved one up North" on the cover 
and paying a dollar and a few odd cents, you can 
start another advertisement of New Orleans on 
its way. There is a flavour about the praline 
amazingly suggestive of New Orleans itself; it 
is a romantic taste, and I would be willing to 
wager that thousands of tourists have been 
drawn across the continent in pursuit of it, just 
as in ante-bellum days one turned toward Vienna 
for coffee 'n' rolls. I ate pralines in the street; 
I nibbled them in the grateful shadows of the 
Movie theatres; I tried to satiate myself with 
the elusive deliciousness, but I could not have 
succeeded, for the very memory of the adorable 
confection brings tears to my eyes. 

Nothing that the dweller in New Orleans had 
to ofifer could match the peculiar charm of the 
praline. And I think he resented our affection 
for the frivolous candy as if it reflected in some 
mysterious way upon the integrity, the ability, 
the astounding business talent of his mistress. 

"She is modern," he assured us, time and time 
again, "absolutely modern. The old New 
Orleans is dead. Of course," shrugging his 
shoulders and spreading out his hands, "we re- 

[273] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

gret the passing of so delightful a creature. But 
you know, my dear friends, she was perverse; 
she was dreadfully dangerous. She was untidy, 
too, and never swept in the corners or washed 
down the steps or polished the windows. When 
the modern New Orleans came along, she had 
to drive out the mosquitoes that infested the 
gardens, carrying the yellow fever on their 
poisoned wings; she had to rat-proof the houses 
for fear of the bubonic plague. The old New 
Orleans was a careless wench and altogether 
too many people fell in love with her. She was 
frivolous, she danced too much; she slept all day 
and feasted all night. She died, and the modern 
New Orleans — a splendid woman, a capable 
woman! — set about recovering the improvident 
creature's fortune." 

"But," we wanted to know, "does any one ever 
fall in love with this modern New Orleans? Do 
people lose their heads, as they used to, at the 
very sight of her?" 

"Why, yes," answered the dweller in New 
Orleans, looking slightly confused and dropping 
his eyes, "business men, go-ahead young men 
adore her. She is so supremely capable. I will 
show you how she amuses herself. There are 
no more tawdry gowns and seductive smiles, 
sly flirtations and serenades, perfumed notes and 

[274] 



OF THE SOUTH 

stolen kisses. Modern New Orleans patterns 
herself after New York and Chicago. She is 
chic. You will see. . . ." 

You go to the opera; it is not the traditional 
audience you have dreamed of finding, nor is the 
performance given in the old French Opera 
House, Gallier's famous theatre "across Canal 
Street" in the vieux carve, where Patti sang and 
where the glorious traditions of French opera 
were upheld for fifty years. It is, instead, Bos- 
ton grand opera, an unworthy performance of 
Mascagni's "Iris," which the dweller in New 
Orleans offers you as a sop for those fascinating 
days of French opera, when New Orleans wore 
all of her jewels, bared her beautiful neck, stuck 
a flower in her hair and dazzled the ardent 
Creole beaux through the interminable operas 
of another day. Meyerbeer, Auber, Rossini, 
Donizetti, Ponchielli — can you hear the lilting 
arias, the trills and cadenzas and tripping melo- 
dies? Can you see the ballerine floating, like 
povv'der puffs, across the stage? In those days 
the music lovers packed the galleries as they do 
in all Latin countries, and New Orleans got the 
name of being music-mad and therefore musi- 
cally intelligent, for one grows out of the other. 
Strakosch and Canonge and Beauplan directed 
in those golden days of New Orleans' musical 

[275] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

past, and who knows now, since great voices are 
as evanescent as dandelion puffs, how many 
famous tenors and sopranos reached the climax 
of their fame on the stage of the French Opera 
House? 

Modern New Orleans seems strangely content 
to listen to music in a theatre unhallowed and 
unseasoned by such precious memories, for the 
old opera house in the vieux carre is deserted, a 
ghost-ridden place peeling and faded like an 
ancient ballerina, where the "glorious traditions" 
are shut away with those embarrassing memories 
of old New Orleans. 

But you are not given time to drop a tear on 
the grave of French opera. The dweller in New 
Orleans hustles you into his motor and you rush 
smoothly through the city along broad avenues 
bordered with palms and oaks, crepe myrtle and 
ligustrum, feathery bamboo and giant Louisiana 
cane, past splendid modern homes set deeply in 
gardens and girdled with wide lawns, past green 
parks and monuments and impressive public 
buildings, out of the city altogether to the white 
shell road which borders the New Basin Canal. 
Then the dweller in New Orleans tries to break 
all speed records, for he loves speed as well as 
ability, in getting you to West End. You shut 
your eyes, pray hard for your guardian angel 

[276] 



OF THE SOUTH 

to clear the road and count a hundred. When 
you get to ninety-nine you are in West End, a 
brand-new resort which has been built over the 
ruins of an older and possibly more likable resort 
destroyed several years ago during one of the 
violent Gulf storms. 

West End is in a painful state of newness; 
where there should be trees, a forest of ornamen- 
tal street lamps springs from the neat patches 
of clipped green sward. The dweller in New 
Orleans tells you that the place is crowded in 
summer and that the automobiles of breeze-seek- 
ing New Orleans stand wheel to wheel along the 
driveway; with eloquent gestures he describes 
the Prismatic Fountain, a sort of Wagnerian 
nightmare of coloured lights and thin, high- 
tossed water jets and drifting clouds of spray. 
But even such cheap attractions as this cannot 
spoil the beauty of Pontchartrain, a beautiful 
lake full of caprices and subject to fits of anger, 
but ideal, in its calmer moods, for the small sail- 
ing boat, the flower-laden and lumbersome 
house-boat and the jaunty pleasure launch. It 
perhaps feels a sense of its commercial impor- 
tance, for a canal is being cut which will join 
Pontchartrain to the Mississippi and make a 
great industrial artery of the lake. Modern 
New Orleans never overlooks an opportunity 

[277] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

for trade expansion. For a long time she has 
had her eye on a certain canal in Panama — 

The dweller in New Orleans pulled himself 
up short, for it is not his custom to mention 
business when there are pleasures on hand; he 
never wears a preoccupied frown when he is 
playing host. He said nothing more of Panama 
but turned his car out of West End and took 
us to the Bungalow, a roadhouse on the way 
back to New Orleans famous for the lyric tal- 
ents of its chef d'orchestre. The genial black 
can improvise, to an indescribable tune of his 
own, couplets without end. He rhymes as easily 
as you and I breathe. He grins, rocks, shows 
his capacious gums and spins verses as a spider 
spins a thread. He will take any theme you offer 
him — war, politics or personalities — put it into 
his extraordinary black brain and draw it out 
again as poetry. 

The dweller in New Orleans scribbled our 
names and something about us on the back of 
the menu card and smuggled the information 
through several black palms crossed with silver 
to the improvisateiir so that we were astounded 
to hear ourselves immortalised in verse. It was 
all perfectly good-natured and in good taste, al- 
though I can see how one might precipitate some 

[278] 



OF THE SOUTH 

pretty scandals by giving the poet embarrassing 
personalities for elaboration. 

This sort of thing could not have gone on in 
the New Orleans of the past, where any familiar- 
ity set the young bloods off like firecrackers. It 
used to be a ticklish business to jest with a Creole 
about the cut of his nose or the colour of his 
vest or the state of his heart. The practical 
joker or the genial drunk usually found himself 
paying for the follies of his wagging tongue 
under the duelling oaks. Many young men set- 
tled these little matters of honour with their 
lives. One fire-eating member of Congress 
fought eighteen duels in defence of his opinions, 
and we wonder, in retrospect, whether they 
could have been worth defending! They fought 
for excitement, for sport, and for exercise, ap- 
parently, for scarcely a morning passed that 
there were not one or two meetings under the 
duelling oaks, and it is an historical fact that 
ten duels were fought there one Sunday morn- 
ing between dawn and the breakfast hour! They 
quarrelled over nothing at all and battled like 
demons with sword and pistol in defence of 
what seems to us a supersensitive honour. And 
sometimes the result was tragic and ended in a 
young life snuffed out and another young life 
embittered, and sometimes it was ludicrous. 

[279] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

Bernard Marigny, who was a famous wit, 
wagged his barbed tongue once too often in the 
presence of the exquisite Monsieur Tissier, the 
Beau Brummel of New Orleans. For a long 
time, the story goes. Monsieur Ti<;sier had en- 
dured Marigny's exaggerated and probably of- 
fensive greetings. ''Ah, Monsieur Tissier," 
Marigny would exclaim whenever he encoun- 
tered the fashionable young man, "what a beau 
you are! How I admire you! How deeply, 
how profoundly, how utterly I admire you!" 
This sort of thing is hard to bear. Tissier lost 
his temper finally and challenged the wit to a 
duel. They met (probably at dawn when the 
beau was not looking his best) under the famous 
oaks in the City Park. Marigny faced his furi- 
ous opponent seriously and said, in a tragic 
voice, "What a delightful fellow you are! Must 
I really deprive the world of the incomparable 
Beau Tissier?" Tissier, to his everlasting credit, 
burst into laughter and the duel was called off. 

To-day the old duelling oaks afford a pleasant 
circle of shade in the wide-spreading fields and 
clipped lawns of a public park. What used to 
be Louis Allard's plantation has become a mas- 
terpiece of landscape gardening, an exquisite 
realisation of a Watteau background. If Louis 
Allard could leave his grave under the oaks and 

[280] 



OF THE SOUTH 

see the classic peristyle where his sugar cane 
used to grow, he would not believe his eyes. 
Poor AUard wrote verses and had so little busi- 
ness sense in his poetic head that when he died 
nothing belonged to him of his plantation save 
the scant six feet of his grave. But that was 
dearly beloved earth, and Louis Allard probably 
lay down in it contentedly. His oaks are still 
alive, inconceivably gnarled and wrapped in 
moss. But where his neglected cotton and indigo 
grew there are velvety golf links and smooth 
polo fields; and where the sandy, deeply rutted, 
ambling roads used to be, there are boulevards 
bordered with palms and purring motors pursu- 
ing each other in an endless game of tag. No, 
Louis Allard, you had best not leave your little 
grave under the oaks! It is your own, and there 
is poetry in the dense branches overhead, a faint 
fragrance of the old New Orleans, dreams of a 
romantic and vanished past. . . . 

There were pleasures I could not share. The 
dweller in New Orleans introduced Allan to 
gin fizzes as they are concocted at Ramos's and 
to a certain cocktail at Sazerac's which almost 
persuaded Allan to settle down in the Creole 
City for life. 

But all the while we were not permitted to 
cross Canal Street; the dweller in New Orleans 

[281] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

kept us away from the vieux carre, and we dined 
at the St. Charles or in the Forest Grill at the 
Grunewald in an atmosphere which might have 
been bottled in New York or Chicago, labelled 
Broadway or Michigan Avenue and shipped 
to New Orleans for tourist consumption. It was 
the height of the racing season and the big 
Grunewald was crowded. All day long, and 
apparently most of the night, the track habitues 
filled the lobby. Getting from the front door 
to the elevators was a blighting business. The 
close-packed mob of men, most of them having 
that acute forward curve of the eye which 
George Randolph Chester attributes to a life- 
long study of the "shell and bean trick," had to 
be charged head down. The Grunewald was 
already "booked up" for the Carnival season, 
and prices had begun to soar in anticipation of 
the week of gaiety which began, in 1917, on the 
twentieth of February and continued in a mad 
crescendo of pleasure until Fat Tuesday, Mardi 
Gras of the Latins. 

Carnival, or came vale, has lost its meaning 
as an English word, for carnival is literally the 
"farewell to flesh" before the sober denials of 
Lent. The good-bye is a long one in New Or- 
leans, the gay city putting ofif the inevitable dis- 
cipline with six days of mad excitement — street 

[282] 



OF THE SOUTH 

parades, balls, masked frolics and public and 
private entertainments of all sorts. And since 
New Orleans has to care for as many as fifty 
thousand visitors, it requires an ambassador's 
diplomacy or an inflated pocket-book or both to 
engage rooms at any of the hotels during Carni- 
val. You are a lucky tourist indeed if at the 
eleventh hour you are given a square inch and a 
pillow — not that you will need the pillow at all 
during Carnival week except for an early morn- 
ing recuperation! They tell the story in New 
Orleans of the hotel guest who sauntered up to 
the desk at noon and, stifling a yawn, asked for 
his mail. 

"D. Jones," said he. 

"Room number, please?" the harassed clerk 
enquired. 

"Bathroom Z," replied the cheerful reveller, 
surrendering his key. 

It takes more than a bed in a bathtub to de- 
press the Carnival tourist. He enjoys himself. 
And because New Orleans is first and last a 
Latin city, she sees to it that he enjoys himself 
in the New Orleans way. For Carnival in New 
Orleans is the very spirit of gaiety, a grotesque 
madness, a delightful joke — it is never, never an 
affair of confetti and vulgarity. It takes the 
true soul of fun to put on a mask and romp in 

[283] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

public, and in New Orleans one sees that rare 
social talent en masse, a whole population bent 
on fun and getting it without once offending 
good taste or self-control. There are not many 
cities in the world where such a thing would be 
possible. It would not be possible in New York 
— if you have ever scratched, clawed and battled 
your way through a New Year's Eve crowd on 
Broadway you will know why. It was not pos- 
sible in Munich even in those ante-strafing days 
of Bavarian revelry. It would not be possible 
in London. But in Vienna — Wien, the rogue! — 
it always has been possible for there you find the 
light touch, the inestimable gift of gaiety. In 
Florence, in Rome, in all the hill towns of Italy 
you may romp streetwards, if you choose, in a 
domino, an incandescent nose and a musical 
shirt-bosom, and meet nothing more offensive 
than a tickling feather and a compliment. So 
it is in New Orleans. 

The fun begins with the parade of the knights 
of Momus, one of the four leading Carnival 
societies responsible for the decorated floats and 
the elaborate street pageants that have meant 
so much in the life of the city since 1827. Rex, 
Comus and Proteus follow in lively procession. 
Canal Street is a seething river of people. The 
huge floats, like gilded and frosted sugar-cake 

[284] 




VOr REMEMBER JIM BLUPSO, DOX'T VOL' .'' ILL SHOW 
YOU HIS WORLD 



OF THE SOUTH 

nightmares, trundle in comic magnificence 
through the crowds. There are monstrous 
swans, bloated dragons, castles, suns, caverns, 
giants. Angels with crepey hair balance on 
swollen clouds blowing gilded trumpets; 
bearded Neptunes brandish tridents, clowns 
gambol and grin. There are toad-faced men 
and dwarfs, gnomes, kings and queens in ermine 
and rhinestones. It is amazingly gay and gro- 
tesque; the people pack the streets all day; 
crowds pour in from the neighbouring cities and 
towns, the restaurants are busier than ever, and 
there are Carnival balls every night where you 
may dance until dawn and start another day 
without having gone to your fabulously expen- 
sive hall bedroom at all! 

The dweller in New Orleans seemed to fear 
that we would take the Carnival too seriously. 
He deprecated the week's frivolity as if he were 
apologising for some hereditary weakness. And 
before we could discover why a serious business 
woman should spend- a fortune on tinsel trap- 
pings once a year, the dweller in New Orleans 
:hanged the subject. He uttered the magic word 
"Panama," which is a sort of industrial kismet 
in the Crescent City, an Open Sesame to the in- 
most heart of American New Orleans. 

"I will show you," he said, "what we are do- 

[285] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

ing to prepare ourselves for the trade that is 
bound to come through the Panama Canal after 
the war. Commerce must some day return to 
its normal activity. When it does, New Orleans 
will be ready for it. She owns most of her 
water-front property; she is improving her rail- 
way facilities; she is putting a short-cut through 
to Lake Pontchartrain from the Mississippi; 
she is going to be exceptionally nice to large 
steamers from all over the world, so that if they 
come once they will come again! What are you 
going to do about it, you New Yorkers? Pres- 
ently New Orleans will be written large on the 
industrial map of the world; she will stand 
shoulder to shoulder with Liverpool, Hamburg, 
Rotterdam and London!" 

The dweller in New Orleans, with a fanatic 
gleam in his eyes, seized his hat and beckoned 
to us. 

"Come! I'll show you some wonderful 
things. I'll show you the great Mississippi roll- 
ing down to the Gulf between the high levees, 
bringing grain from the Middle West and cot- 
ton from the whole Mississippi Valley. I'll 
show you where the famous river steamers, 
loaded to their hurricane decks with bales of cot- 
ton, used to wait six or eight deep at the wharves. 
Fifty years ago they came into New Orleans one 

[286] 



OF THE SOUTH 

after the other, bursting their steam lungs to 
make and to break speed records. They brought 
rich planters from up the river, gamblers, slaves, 
immigrants, rifif-rafif and rich gentry coming 
down to New Orleans for a holiday. You re- 
member Jim Bludso, don't you? I'll show you 
his world — a vastly changed world since Jim 
Bludso's day, for there aren't any tumble-down 
wharves and jetties left, and the river steamers, 
like old Jim himself, have disappeared — gone, 
we hope, to some river Paradise of their own. 
I'll show you miles of city-owned docks and a 
cotton warehouse that covers a hundred acres, 
where machinery does the work of slaves and 
lifts, sorts, loads and unloads two million bales 
of cotton a year. What would Bludso say to 
that, eh? I'll show you grain elevators, banana 
wharves and coffee wharves, ships loading and 
ships unloading — you'll hear every language 
under the sun — even German if you venture 
near the interned ships. And if you don't say 
that New Orleans is New York's most danger- 
ous rival," he said, wagging his finger under 
our astonished noses, "I'll eat my hat!" 

We didn't want him to eat his hat, and we 
knew his spirit well enough to be certain that if 
we didn't indulge in superlatives he would eat 
it crown, brim and all. So we followed him 

[287] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

to the water-front and saw the resistless Missis- 
sippi — (what a happy name it is! It rolls and 
hisses like the yellow stream itself!) — caged be- 
tween the levees and snarling at the city it has 
inundated so many times. We spent hours in 
the steel and concrete warehouses and gazed 
lovingly at big ships lying like passive Prome- 
theuses while the giant claws of snorting der- 
ricks dived into their vitals. We were deafened 
by the rattle and clamour of commerce. We 
saw New Orleans, capable, canny New Orleans, 
sitting in her comfortable front parlour waiting 
for the ships that are bound to come up from 
Panama after the war. Watch out. New York, 
for your Creole rival! She may have ink- 
stained fingers and soot-grimed cheeks, but she 
is clever, she is capable, she is far-sighted 
and — 

"I know she leads a double life," I whispered 
to Allan, as we came out into Canal Street 
again. 

"Who, for goodness' sake?" Allan demanded, 
looking startled. 

"New Orleans. I have heard that she is 
French and dangerous and alluring. Let's run 
away from the dweller in New Orleans and find 
out for ourselves." 

[288] 




CHAPTER XI 

CREOLES, PRALINES AND A LITTLE HISTORY 

O at Royal Street we excused ourselves 
and ran like two children into the 
vieux carre. For you know that 
Canal Street divides New Orleans in 
two, just as the Danube divides Buda from 
Pesth, just as the Seine divides the Paris of to- 
day from the Paris of Montmartre and yester- 
day, just as the Thames divides London, and 
the Arno Florence and the Tiber Rome. On 
the right side of Canal Street as you face the 
river lies the American city, bristling with 
energy and ambition, noise and electric lights, 
shops, Movie theatres, banks, tourist offices, sky- 
scrapers and street cars; on the left is the old 
city, the most completely foreign place in the 
United States, where the width of the streets, 
the paving stones, the architecture, the people, 
and even human voices are utterly different and 
alien and arresting and unforgettable. You 
leave the tawdry crowd in Canal Street and 

[289] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

plunge into a world of soft-spoken people; you 
leave modern department stores and come upon 
curiosity shops that would have delighted Ana- 
tole France, dim and musty places filled with 
the spoils of all that magnificence which centred 
about the Place d'Armes. The windows are full 
of odds and ends of bronze and china, crystal 
and tarnished silver, and little trays, full of old- 
fashioned jewelry — hoop earrings, monstrous 
bracelets set with cameos, necklaces of Etruscan 
gold, fat watches that must have ticked in the 
pockets of embroidered waistcoats, signet rings 
and seals. We stopped every now and then to 
wander into the dim and dusty places, making 
believe that we could aflford to buy some rare 
bit of Sevres "only slightly cracked, as you see, 
Madame," just for the pleasure of watching the 
antiquarian take the piece in his hands, blow 
ofif the accumulation of dust and whisper, in an 
ingratiating voice, a price that would have stag- 
gered a Morgan. I have a passion for long 
earrings which Allan says is due to my ungrati- 
fied longing to be a movie-vampire. I don't 
look at all like a vampire — to tell the truth, 
after making a hurried trip to the looking-glass, 
I don't believe I can describe myself at all. And, 
as far as T can remember, my friends have only 
made two attempts to do it for me. Usually 

[290] 



OF THE SOUTH 

people approach me with a Samaritan gleam m 
their eyes and prepare me for the worst by say- 
ing in a soothing voice, "I am going to tell you 
something for your own good, my dear," which 
always prefaces something utterly nasty and 
hard to bear. I brace myself and hear the truth. 
But on two memorable occasions the formula 
was varied. "I am going to tell you something 
nice, my dear," was followed by the announce- 
ment that Percy B. Shelley and I looked enough 
alike to be twins, and that I was the dead, breath- 
ing image, whatever that means, of George 
Eliot! I struggled under the shame of it for 
years, and might never have recovered my 
self-respect at all if it had not been restored 
to me by a shop-girl. This is how it hap- 
pened. She had been staring at me with such 
fixed attention that she had stopped chewing 
gum. 

"Good Lord," I thought, "does she think I 
am Mark Twain?" 

Apparently not. She nudged her neighbour 
shop-girl and I heard her hoarse whisper, "Seen 
her in the movies?" 

"Naw," said the other, staring, too. "The 
one with the earrings?" 

"Yeh. Ain't you seen her in the movies?" 

"Naw. Whatcher call her?" 
[291] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

"Edith Storey," declared the blessed restorer 
of my self-respect. "She's some swell little 
emoter." 

Edith Storey! I rose in my own esteem. I 
hugged myself. I was born again. 

But where were we? Trying on earrings in 
a New Orleans curiosity shop in Royal Street — 
the Rue Royal which can't be pronounced save 
by a true Parisian, a cockney of the boulevards. 
Try it and see! 

I dangled a large cluster of golden and ame- 
thyst grapes against my cheeks and peered into 
a cracked mirror while Allan, with his chin 
tucked into his collar and a capitalist's manner, 
priced Napoleonic escritoires and Wedgewood 
plates. I tried another pair made of coral, 
fringed with Etruscan gold, and asked Allan, 
as I turned my head this way and that, "D' you 
like them at all?" 

Allan tore himself away from the impassioned 
salesman and examined me critically. "You 
would need a Madame Bovary velvet gown with 
a square train to wear earrings like that," he 
decided. "And vou are too young to wear vel- 
vet" 

It was a triumph of diplomacy. I bought a 
pair of light hoops very delicately made and 
altogether sub-deb and frivolous. It saved us 

[292] 




THIS IS riii: rkal xi.w oklkaxs 



OF THE SOUTH 

from an ignominous retreat at least, but I put 
the Madame Bovary corals back in their tray 
reluctantly with a sigh for the vanished picture 
of myself in a velvet gown with a square 
train. . . . 

Out in Royal Street again we shouted aloud. 

''This is the real New Orleans! We are find- 
ing her out. She has put aside her sailor hat 
and her tailored suit and has slipped into a 
ruffled dressing gown, an untidy dressing gown 
a little too long in the back. She has put her 
pretty bare feet into slippers and has clasped a 
string of pearls around her neck. She is at home 
again, in her shabby, dusty old house full of 
beautiful things. She is lazy and sensuous and 
mysterious and provoking. She hums little 
Creole songs: // va partir et na pas vue mes 
larmes or Pauvre piti' Mamsel Zizi. She may, 
oh, she may ask us to supper. . . ." 

And of course she did. She explained, not 
apologetically, but sadly, that her most famous 
chefs were dead. Boudro, Moreau, Antoine 
Alciatore pere, the elder Madame Eegue, fa- 
mous cooks of another generation, could not be 
there to serve us. But we could still have an 
amazing breakfast at Begue's if we should stop 
there any morning at eleven o'clock. Galatoire's 
was excellent. Or we could go to Antoine's in 

[293] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

St. Louis Street or to the Louisiane in Iberville 
Street. Alciatore pere bequeathed his secrets 
to his two sons, Jules and Fernand; one is in 
charge of Antoine's, the other of the Louisiane, 
and it is a toss-up which of the two is the best 
restaurant. The Louisiane has been garnished 
and brightened recently, and both of the old 
cafes have done away with the characteristic 
sanded floors of the past. Of the two places, 
Antoine's is the simpler and Jules presides in 
the kitchen. The Louisiane has surrendered to 
the dancing onslaught, and an excited little 
waiter proudly showed us a large room with a 
polished floor which has been set aside for those 
fox-trotters and one-steppers who have so little 
reverence of the masterpieces of Alciatore fils 
that they will dance between mouthfuls. 

It was at the Louisiane that we met the lover 
of New Orleans. He was sitting at a table not 
far from us, hidden behind a copy of Le Rire 
three months old, just as we had left him five 
years before in Paris. We had parted from him 
then, after a month spent pleasantly together in 
exploring the ''other bank of the Seine," at a 
little restaurant in the Rue des Saints Peres 
where we had stopped to drink to our next meet- 
ing. 

"You must come to New Orleans some day," 
[294] 



OF THE SOUTH 

he had said. "I expect to go back there next 
year or the year after. You will like it." 

We had promised and had left him, little 
thinking that the mysterious threads of our com- 
plex destinies were to draw us back to America 
and southward to New Orleans and into the 
Louisiane; little thinking that our friend's des- 
tiny would lie towards the Marne and that it 
would lead him into battle for France and up to 
the gates of death and then mysteriously back 
again into delectable life. . . . 

He heard our voices and lowered Le Rire to 
stare at us. And it was as if five years had 
evaporated into thin air with all their anxieties 
and anguish, pleasures and loves, and we were 
back at the start again — three young pairs of 
eyes looking at an untarnished and romantic 
world. 

"So you have come to New Orleans after all," 
he said. 

And then there was bedlam! The Louisiane, 
from Fernand to Fernand fils, from the cashier 
to the oldest waiter, joined in the reunion. 

"I've come to sit at the knees of my first god- 
dess," he told us. "I can't fight for her because 
there is a piece of German shrapnel waltzing 
around my anatomy and blighting my locomo- 
tive powers — but I can love her. Paris has my 

[295] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

soul, but New Orleans has my heart. I am a 
good Creole." 

We toasted his sweetheart in absinthe, a little 
pale green drink flavoured delicately with par- 
egoric, so insidious that where you should take 
one you take two — and so on. We went all the 
way to the old Absinthe House over on Bour- 
bon Street, so that we might pledge on historic 
pledging ground. But v/hen we knocked at the 
door a very polite and positive fellow in a tweed 
cap opened it an inch or two and whispered, 
"Very pleased to serve the two gentlemen. But 
I can't serve the lady. The lid is on." And 
then shut the door in our faces. 

So we had to turn away from the famous old 
place, where at one time I could have toasted 
New Orleans in a true Parisian mixture of Me- 
lissa and Fennel, Anise and Hyssop, the absinthe 
frappee of delectable memory. We went back 
to the Louisiane and pledged our hostess in 
Spanish absinthe before the first course of our 
supper was served. 

I don't know whether Allan and the lover of 
New Orleans noticed it, but absinthe is not my 
habitual beverage and I sank back almost at 
once into an abyss of strange mental mists where 
I was acutely conscious of the dining-room, the 
smiling and paternal waiter, the chattering din- 

[296] 



OF THE SOUTH 

ers and, before me, a plate of baked oysters — 
acutely conscious and at the same time irrepara- 
bly divided, set aside like a lost soul behind a 
transparent and imprisoning veil. It was an 
atrocious nightmare. But I must have acquitted 
myself well, for Allan asked me if I would like 
another absinthe. Another! I rose slowly out 
of the numbing languor to shake my head, and 
then sank again like a pebble falling to the bot- 
tom of a deep pool. 

The appalling thing passed as quickly as it 
had come; the veil was whisked away and I 
heard the rattle of dishes and the clamour of 
voices distinctly again. I pushed the little glass 
of pale green froth across the table with a shud- 
der and speared one of the divine oysters. An- 
other? Rather not! 

Day after day we dined at the Louisiane or 
at Antoine's, so that with our devotion we won 
smiles from the Alciatore family, from Jules 
and Fernand and his son and from old Madame 
Alciatore, who was the wife of Antoine pere and 
who still sits enthroned behind the caisse and 
makes change nimbly and unceasingly. I should 
like to tell you of all the delicious things we 
had to eat, for the dishes of the two Alciatore 
brothers deserve the praise one would give a 
work of art. 1 remember the gumbo a la Creole, 

[297] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

of course, for that is first and last a New Orleans 
delicacy; I remember the bouillabaisse, the hot 
breads, the bisque of crayfish a la Cardinal, and 
pompano en Papillote; I remember oysters dis- 
guised and oysters glorified, and tomatoes puree 
that would have melted in the mouth of a snow 
man, and salads that might have been sent on a 
magic carpet from Paoli's in Florence, duck 
pressed a la Tour d' Argent, brulot and adorable 
little pastries meant only for gods and goddesses, 
not for hungry mortals. 

The secret of it all? Who knows! What is 
the secret behind a Tintoretto or a beautiful 
gown or a Strauss song? A little pepper, a little 
skill and much art. When the famous Cafe 
Brulot Diabolique is served at Antoine's, the 
lights are lowered in the restaurant. The serv- 
ing of such a coffee becomes, appropriately, a 
rite, and it is a solemn moment when the silver 
bowls, ablaze with burning cognac, make their 
appearance in the crowded cafe. Strangely, 
since we claim to love freedom, it is ceremony 
and not license which appeals most strongly to 
our heart of hearts! 

From the moment of our first discovery, the 
vieux carre claimed us every day. The sixty 
squares of the original city still enclose all that 
is most appealing of romantic New Orleans. 

[298] 



OF THE SOUTH 

Few changes have been made in It, and it speaks 
well for the taste and veneration of modern New 
Orleans that the characteristic balconied houses 
built of adobe and stuccoed brick have not been 
interfered with. The city which rose out of 
the destructive fire of 1794 looks very much as 
it did over a hundred years ago. The doors are 
flush with the street and the houses are built in 
the Spanish fashion to enclose an inner court. 
The tinted and peeling walls are so varied in 
surface and colour that one is led from corner 
to corner in pursuit of the picturesque, now at- 
tracted by the high-piled iron balconies or the 
dormer windows or the quaint chimney pots 
of some delightful old house, now lured by a 
glimpse of weed-grown gardens. It is quite 
true that the quarter has been given over in part 
to Italians from the bassa Italia and to negroes. 
But a few Creoles still cling to their city; I 
have heard their soft voices and ingratiating 
patois everywhere in the streets. 

What the racial status of the Creole really is 
has been misunderstood, if not generally, at least 
by a great enough number of people to warrant 
an explanation of the matter here. A Creole is 
a person of mixed Spanish and French blood, 
a native of New Orleans, and not, as is occa- 
sionally supposed, a French or a Spanish mu- 

[299] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

latto. The octoroons and quadroons, who played 
such a sinister part in the story of the city, have 
been confused, perhaps not unnaturally, with 
the Creoles. The social distinction between the 
two was not only desirable but necessary. To- 
wards the end of the eighteenth century, when 
New Orleans had begun to recover from the 
effects of an unstable and adventurous history, 
the idle, spendthrift, profligate young men of 
the town dangled at the heels of the pretty yel- 
low women who came from Jamaica, Santa 
Domingo and the French West Indies. These 
women were often amazingly beautiful; there 
was just enough white blood in their veins to 
make them conspicuously unlike negresses, and 
they were a danger to the social life of New 
Orleans. They dressed in the height of fashion, 
established themselves luxuriously and flaunted 
their mulatto loveliness under the outraged 
noses of the Creole matrons. 

There are terrible stories of the wild, utterly 
abandoned orgies that took place during the 
famous quadroon balls of the period. The ball- 
room was in a building in Orleans Street near 
the little gardens of St. Anthony's Close, and it 
is said that white men fought duels in the Close 
over the yellow sirens. An order of coloured 
nuns has turned the dance-hall into a convent, 

[300] 




STUCCOED HRICK WALLS, ARCADES AND COOL INNER 

COURTS 



OF THE SOUTH 

but no number of litanies and candles, tears and 
prayers can make the place anything but tragi- 
cally suggestive of that unmoral and degenerate 
society. The alluring quadroons might have 
disrupted the social life of New Orleans if the 
law had not finally forced all women of negro 
blood to wear the tignon, the distinguishing ban- 
dana headdress which branded the wearer as 
conspicuously and perhaps as tragically as Hes- 
ter Pryne's scarlet letter. 

But if you would know more about the quad- 
roons, read Cable's "Old Creole Days." Ma- 
dame John's house is in Dumaine Street — a two- 
story house 'deeply balconied, as forlorn and 
dilapidated as a house can be; the shutters are 
closed, the pillars of the balcony lean drunkenly, 
the whole place totters as if a slight push would 
send it crashing down. 

Cable is not the only "literary memory" of 
New Orleans. Alcee Fortier and Gayarre, in 
their histories of Louisiana, told the exciting 
story of the Crescent City as well as it could be 
told, although there is a more recent book by 
Miss Grace King, "New Orleans, the Place and 
the People," that reads like a novel and has the 
double advantage of being perfectly true. Laf- 
cadio Hearn, the myopic Greek-Oriental-Irish- 
Amerlcan, who saw life and people and things 

[301] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

dimly and vested them with his own amazing 
imagination, lived a part of his life in New 
Orleans. He knew every street and courtyard 
in the vieux carre, and he collected some of the 
most amusing of the Creole proverbs and called 
the little book "Gombo Zebes." His best story, 
"Chita," was written about the wild country at 
the mouth of the Mississippi and the hurricane 
that destroyed Last Island in 1856. ''Chita," 
like Conrad's "Typhoon," is a hair-raising pic- 
ture of nature on the rampage, nature let loose 
and furious, implacable, terrifying and unen- 
durable. After reading it I had no desire to 
go to Grand Isle, the pirate La Fitte's stamping 
ground. Byron chose that adorable buccaneer 
for the hero of his "Corsair," and I ought to 
have been willing to pursue such literary treas- 
ure to the ends of the earth. But when we were 
in New Orleans the weather was erratic; it was 
alternately as cold as Burlington, Vermont, and 
as hot as Bay Head, New Jersey. And since 
Grand Isle is occasionally blown to ribbons in 
the teeth of the devouring hurricanes that sweep 
across the Gulf, I fought shy of going there. 

La Fitte was a magnificent fellow, a pirate 
with the "grand manner" and surely no worse a 
villain than the submarine commanders of to- 
day. He called himself a privateer, and if he 

[302] 



OF THE SOUTH 

attacked and robbed English merchantmen he 
explained that he was privileged, as a bearer of 
letters of marque from the Republic of Cartha- 
gena, to plunder enemy ships. This has a fa- 
miliar sound to our modern ears, accustomed to 
the excuses and self-justifications of U-boat 
pirates! 

The legend of La Fitte has taken on romance 
with time, and New Orleans is rather proud of 
him to-day. They show you the site of his little 
blacksmith shop at the corner of Chartres and 
St. Philip Streets, where he is supposed to have 
wrought a great many of the beautiful iron 
railings and balustrades in the old city before 
he "hit the trail" to piracy and fame. Like so 
many of those historical criminals whom we 
have learned to admire by simply sitting cosily 
in our library and shuddering at their fearless- 
ness. La Fitte had his own sense of honour. The 
British had so great a respect for his ability that 
when they were getting ready to attack New 
Orleans in 1814, they tried to win La Fitte over 
to their side. Whereupon the bold freebooter 
rushed back to New Orleans and offered his 
sword to General Andrew Jackson in the cam- 
paign against the British! This act of patriot- 
ism greatly endeared the pirate to New Orleans, 
and if he had stayed in the city until death gave 

[303] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

him his reward, he would have had it without 
any doubt. But he sailed away to a mysterious 
fate, and the thwarted Creoles erected a monu- 
ment in the St. Louis Cemetery to his lieutenant, 
Dominique You, calling him, of all things, the 
new Bayard — sans peur et sans reproche! 

Eugene Field and Thomas Bailey Aldrich 
have given their genius to the celebration of 
the Creole charm, and France, too, contributed 
to the literature that has grown out of the settle- 
ment of Louisiana. The Abbe Prevost's "Ma- 
non Lescaut," the first French novel, is a story 
of the filles a la cassette, the "casket girls" who 
were sent over from France to those wifeless 
settlers who were "running in the woods after 
the Indian girls" and were in need of wives. 
Iberville had come from Canada, following in 
La Salle's footsteps in 1699, and had seen what 
any far-sighted man was bound to have seen, 
that a city at the mouth of the Mississippi would 
be also at the mouth of the whole continent. 
Iberville died ignominiously of a yellow fever 
and left the task of establishing New Orleans 
to his brother, Bienville. And Bienville, send- 
ing engineers and workmen to lay out the city, 
actually built the vieux carre, not as we know it 
to-day, but a mere scattering of wooden huts, 

[304] 



OF THE SOUTH 

a camp in the wilderness of swamps, bayous and 
forest. 

A parade-ground was set aside and destiny 
made it the Place d'Armes, Jackson Square of 
to-day, the "down stage" of the whole drama 
of New Orleans. Bienville had a pretty task 
before him. The river overflowed its banks, 
there were epidemics and hardships and dis- 
couragements without end. And to add to the 
poor man's anxieties, the lonely settlers clam- 
oured for wives. An appeal for wives was sent 
to France, and the authorities at home, scurry- 
ing about in mad haste to meet the demands of 
the important new colony in Louisiana, scoured 
the houses of correction, the hospitals, the pris- 
ons and the streets for the much-desired wives, 
and sent them to the wilderness of New France. 
Poor Manon Lescaut was one of the pathetic 
brides, and although there is no record in New 
Orleans to prove that the Abbe Prevost founded 
his fiction on fact, it is at least certain that the 
Chevalier des Grieux is buried there, for you 
may see his grave, if you are curious enough 
about such things, to-day. 

The first shipments of wives were apparently 
not acceptable to the better class of men among 
the colonists, for the Cassette girls, dowered by 
the king of France with a little cassette of linen 

[305] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

and fine raiment, were sent later to the Ursuline 
nuns to be chaperoned and then married with a 
not too indecent haste. The Ursulines must have 
had their hands full if all the girls were as pretty 
as Manon and all the colonists as ardent as the 
Chevalier des Grieux! 

After that, the lively history of the place was 
varied by the coming and going of this governor 
and that governor, the building of forts and the 
expulsion of the Jesuit priests, who had estab- 
lished themselves in the town. And in 1762 
France, with a sudden cessation of interest in 
her colony, ceded Louisiana to Spain. When 
one considers that Louisiana began at the Mis- 
sissippi and ended, more or less indefinitely, at 
the Rocky Mountains, France seems to have 
been even recklessly generous! The Creoles 
very naturally resented the transfer and sent up 
a howl of protest. But Louis XV had wires 
of his own to pull. He said nothing, silence be- 
ing the better part of discretion, and a Spanish 
governor, Ulloa, arrived at New Orleans. It 
took five years for the resentment of the Creoles 
to reach the boiling point; then they ousted 
Ulloa and might have joined the British-Amer- 
ican colonies of the North if the fiery Don Ales- 
sandro O'Reilly, with three thousand troops, 
fifty pieces of artillery and twenty-four ships, 

[306] 



OF THE SOUTH 

had not arrived to discipline the unruly colo- 
nists. He began his tirade by shooting six of 
the most rebellious spirits and imprisoning six 
more in the unsavoury dungeons of Morro Cas- 
tle. He believed in thoroughness, this Spanish- 
Irish Don Alessandro O'Reilly! 

During the Spanish possession the crude, ill- 
paved and badly drained town planned by Bien- 
ville was destroyed by fire. The vieux carre of 
to-day is the Spanish town which rose from the 
ashes of the old French settlement, so that we 
owe the adobe and stuccoed brick walls, the 
arcades and cool inner courts, the iron balconies 
and tiled roofs to Spanish and not to French in- 
fluence. 

We should be particularly grateful to one 
public-spirited Spaniard, Don Almonaster y 
Roxas, who built the St. Louis Cathedral and 
the splendid old Hall of the Cabildo facing the 
wide, open space which was then known as the 
Place d'Armes and has been renamed Jackson 
Square to suit the American tongues of the pres- 
ent generation. 

The Cabildo houses an interesting collection 
of Indian relics and colonial antiques. In the 
Sala Capitular on the second floor, Louisiana 
was ceded from Spain to France and from 
France to the United States. But I scarcely 

[3071 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

paused on the stairway to glance at the portrait 
of La Salle in a curled wig and armour, or to 
look at the paintings of Bienville and Iberville, 
fathers of the delectable New Orleans. I hur- 
ried past them because I knew that the Antom- 
marchi death-mask of Napoleon was upstairs in 
one of the salons facing the Place d'Armes. 
Allan followed, helping the lover of New Or- 
leans to negotiate the stairs as nimbly as the 
piece of German shrapnel allowed. And when 
we were all three bending over the glass case 
where the mask is displayed, we gasped, for we 
might have been looking at the quiet face of 
the Little Corporal himself. 

"How like," the lover of New Orleans said in 
a gentle voice, "how amazingly like him!" And 
then smiled at his own assumption of familiarity. 

The head lies against a dark background of 
velvet or some soft stuff, and it is startlingly 
lifelike, almost palpitant in its extraordinary 
reality. It seemed to us the face of a young man. 
The cheek bones are broad, the chin powerful, 
thrust forward and deeply dented. The mouth 
is open, the lips drawn back from the teeth in 
a half smile, a shadowy, indistinct, fleeting smile 
touched with irony and with tenderness. The 
eyes are full-lidded and deeply sunk, either from 
pain or weariness or in the strange metamorpho- 

[308] 



OF THE SOUTH 

sis of death. The nose is magnificent. It is an 
heroic nose, a nasal extremity worthy of an epic 
poem; it springs grandly from the forehead, the 
nostrils are clean-cut and spirited; the whole 
structure, like noble architecture, inspires awe 
and admiration. We prostrated ourselves before 
Dr. Antommarchi's record of that superb olfac- 
tory organ, Allan comparing it to Emma Eames', 
the lover of New Orleans ranking it with .No- 
velli's, and I claiming for it a place in the sun 
with Scotti's incomparable nose. 

If Nicholas Girod, mayor of New Orleans, 
had had his way. New Orleans might have pos- 
sessed the body, as well as the death-mask of 
the Emperor. Girod was an ardent Napoleon- 
ist and a bitter enemy of England. With Cap- 
tain Bossiere and a few other sympathisers, he 
actually attempted to cheat the English, St. 
Helena and death. Girod built a house at the 
corner of St. Louis and Chartres Streets and 
furnished it for Napoleon's use. Bossiere 
equipped a fast clipper, the Seraphine, for the 
voyage of rescue to St. Helena. The crew was 
engaged, Bossiere was in possession of maps and 
plans of the harbour and coast defences of the 
prison-island, and the magnificent adventure 
might have been put through to a glorious finish 
if death had not snatched away the prize. The 

[309] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

news of Napoleon's passing reached New Or- 
leans three days before the Seraphine and the 
adventurous Bossiere were ready to sail. Bos- 
siere, of course, was broken-hearted; he had 
dreamed so long of freeing his idol from a de- 
testable bondage and bringing him across the 
ocean in the Seraphine to an expectant and de- 
voted New Orleans, to freedom, to the simple 
luxury of Nicholas Girod's gift-house, and to 
peace among friends! If Napoleon had reached 
America, it is not at all improbable that New 
Orleans, and not Paris, would have claimed his 
body and the right to build his tomb. He would 
have been on French soil, after all! 

We left the Cabildo and went out into Jack- 
son Square to wander up and down the sunny 
paths between the neat plots of grass and flow- 
ers laid out by the Baroness Pontalba, daughter 
of that public-spirited Andalusian, Don Almo- 
naster y Roxas, who was fired by the paternal 
longing to beautify New Orleans. For she built 
the double row of houses flanking the square, 
and with a likable and pardonable pride, had 
her initials, A. P., interwoven into the intricate 
patterns of the beautiful iron balconies. The 
buildings have fallen into decay, and where they 
are occupied at all, the tenants seem to rejoice 
in hanging their wash on the balconies to dry. 

[310] 



OF THE SOUTH 

The fastidious Baroness, if she were to return 
to New Orleans to-day, would not recognise the 
Pontalba estate. Jackson Square was the heart 
of the old city; but modern New Orleans wears 
her heart on her sleeve over in Canal Street, and 
the drowsy little square was deserted except for 
a few derelicts who had set up light-housekeep- 
ing on the public benches. 

We went over to the French Market, hoping 
to capture a little of the local colour that every 
other traveller has encountered among the vege- 
table and fruit stalls of the old Halle de Bou- 
cheries. But the Creole has abandoned the 
market to the Italian small grocer. Natives of 
Reggio, Calabria and the Abruzzi answered my 
feeble French questions with blank stares or 
torrents of absolutely unintelligible Calabrese. 
One black-eyed son of Italy posed for my cam- 
era, holding a roach delicately between thumb 
and forefinger. It was the biggest roach I have 
ever seen, and I am thinking of sending the pho- 
tograph to the lover of New Orleans to prove 
that although his city is rat-proof, and mosquito- 
proof, it is not by any means roach-proof. 

Allan refused to take any interest in cabinet 
photographs of French Market roaches. He 
established himself on a barrel of apples and 
made colour-sketches of the long, pillared mar- 

[311] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

ket, the stands of fruits and vegetables, the 
sunny, cobbled streets beyond. His audience, ex- 
pecting to see lifelike portraits of silver-skinned 
onions, smiting radishes, emerald-green cab- 
bages, golden oranges and yellow beans, hung 
over his shoulder and marvelled, and was 
vaguely disappointed, at cub'stic swirls and 
whirligigs of colour. If you are going to paint 
in public, and want to be popular with the mob, 
you should try to keep Picasso out of your work. 

''That," said one long-moustached fruit ven- 
dor, he of the roach, looking over Allan's 
shoulder with a critical air and pointing with 
his little finger at a daub of red, "is the Signora 
Romano of the vegetable stand. I recognise her 
shawl. It is," he added, winking at me, "a 
speaking likeness." 

"You are mistaken," a little fellow who was 
standing on tiptoe interrupted. "The red spot 
is the wheel of the carriage that stands outside 
in the street. I see the spokes, and the left ear 
of the horse just beyond." 

There was a shout of laughter and Allan 
closed his pochade box with a snap. "I'll show 
you," he said, looking fierce and knitting his 
brows, "that I can draw a picture of your Sig- 
nora Romano and your red cart and your lop- 
eared horse that the great-grandmother of all 

[312] 



OF THE SOUTH 

three will recognise and venerate. Tell Signora 
Romano to sit where she is and not to move on 
the pain of death. And some one see that the 
horse and cart stays put." 

Thereupon he filled his mouth with pencils, 
and while the fruit vendor shouted to the 
Signora Romano to hold fast and not to wink 
an eye for ten minutes, the insulted artist turned 
out an Art Students' League chromo that created 
a sensation in the French Market. He drew 
every buckle on the lop-eared horse's harness, 
he reproduced the pattern on Signora Romano's 
red shawl, he painted the portrait of every scar- 
let-cheeked apple and crusty potato and feather- 
topped celery head that came between him and 
his line of vision. A chorus of "Ohs" and "Ahs," 
ecstatic and appreciative, rose from the Market 
as the awful masterpiece progressed. 

"It is the Signora's nose, her very mouth, her 
eyes " 

And then a shout to the rigid and blushing 
Signora, ''Don't move! The gentleman is re- 
producing the mole on your cheek!" 

The Signora, stiffening, gave herself to im- 
mortality. 

When it was finished, Allan plucked the pen- 
cils out of his mouth and presented the work of 
art to the Market. He accepted his triumph 

[313] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

in a moody silence and muttered, as soon as we 
were beyond earshot, ''Shades of Cellini and 
Giotto! The Italians of to-day have drifted into 
an artistic backwater. What a fool I was not 
to make them swallow what is good for them!" 

But the lover of New Orleans and I shouted 
with laughter all the way back to Jackson 
Square, although Allan's depression lasted still 
further and couldn't be done away with until the 
paternal waiter at the Louisiane had restored 
both self-respect and good humour by serving 
three "Smiles," cocktails calculated to warm the 
heart of the most misunderstood artist in the 
world. 

"I am sorry," the lover of New Orleans said, 
as we came out into the street again, vastly 
cheered, "that you have heard so much Italian 
and so little French spoken in the vieux carre. 
Creole French is full of an ingratiating softness. 
Like the English of New England and the 
French of Canada, it has remained practically 
unchanged, except for the inevitable colloquial- 
isms, since the seventeenth and eighteenth cen- 
turies; it is strangely aflfected, too, by the dialect 
of the Creole negroes, whose speech is a mad 
jumble of African and French, and is unintel- 
ligible except to the initiated. The Creole negro 
is a strange concoction; he may be a 'modern 

[314] 



OF THE SOUTH 

nigger' as far as the eye can penetrate him, but 
in his soul of souls he is still a prey to terrifying 
superstitions. Voudouism may have been put 
under the ban of the police, but it is still exist- 
ent. To stamp out witchcraft of that sort would 
mean stamping out the ignorance of the negro 
soul. I have seen some of their rites ; they chant, 
they eat loathsome brews, they dance themselves 
into a cataleptic state. If you have seen Ridgely 
Torrance's 'Granny Maumee' you know how 
dangerous such frenzies of hate and terror can 
be. Beauregard Square used to be the place 
where the negroes gathered to go through their 
detestable orgies. It was called Congo Square 
in the old days, for the Voudou rites and dances 
were brought by the first slaves from Africa." 
We thought that the grisly past of Congo 
Square made going there a futile pilgrimage 
unless we could see a Voudou seance ourselves. 
But the lover of New Orleans assured us that 
the lid had not only been clamped down on 
absinthe, or for that matter on any sort of a 
drink on Sunday, but on the faintest suspicion 
of Congo orgies. A negro, to keep strictly 
within the law, must boil his toads and snakes in 
the privacy of his own home, and he may not 
build sacrificial fires or brew poisons or "throw 
a hoodoo" unless he does it behind closed doors. 

[315] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

So long as the sensitive police do not see the 
affair, it may go on. But woe betide the Vou- 
dou Queen who cavorts in public! 

The lover of New Orleans, seeing that we 
were in a state of mind for horrors, piloted us 
down Bourbon Street to see the Haunted House, 
where a certain Madame Lalaurie, a society 
woman of charm and influence, amused herself 
in her moments of leisure by torturing her slaves. 
She tied them to the walls with heavy iron 
chains, she flogged them and bruised and starved 
them. Afterwards, with a tender smile and an 
air of great sweetness, she descended to her 
beautiful drawing-room and entertained the 
elite of New Orleans society. And the pretty 
sport might have gone on indefinitely if one of 
the slaves had not set fire to the straw pallet of 
her miserable bed and brought the fire depart- 
ment and the light of publicity to the scandal. 
Madame Lalaurie escaped, fortunately for her 
own good, since a mob had gathered to burn, pil- 
lage and lay waste her home and to tear the 
gentle Lalaurie herself into ribbons. She some- 
how got to France and disgraced charity by 
becoming charitable, and died, we hope, in 
despair. 

We might have stayed in the vieux carre for- 
ever, pursuing such stories, and many roguish 

[316] 



OF THE SOUTH 

and pleasant ones, from street to street and from 
house to house. But we had engaged passage 
to New York on a certain steamer called the 
Concho sailing from Galveston in a day or so. 
We had to go on. And that is the penalty of 
being a tourist. The tickets were in the leather 
pocket-book in Allan's vest pocket; the Concho 
apparently held to a rigid schedule and couldn't 
be bribed to wait over until we had exhausted 
the fascinations of those sixty squares of Creole 
town. 

We walked for the last time through the nar- 
row streets, and heard the real New Orleans 
singing little love songs behind her open win- 
dows, saw her flirting lazily in her courtyards, 
dined with her for the last time at Antoine's and 
then fell into a taxi-cab, reeled across the city 
on two wheels and caught the El Paso express 
by the fraction of a second. 



[317] 



CHAPTER XII 

GALVESTON, THE OPTIMIST 




FTER the train left New Orleans it 
ambled in a leisurely way along the 
banks of the river as if it were look- 
ing for a good place to wade across. 
The long search piqued our curiosity for we 
knew that the most courageous trestle in the 
world could scarcely straddle the rushing Mis- 
sissippi. While most of the passengers stowed 
themselves away behind the swaying green cur- 
tains of their berths, we preferred to stay awake 
and to see the manner of our crossing. 

If La Salle and Iberville and Bienville could 
have witnessed the miracle of an express train 
being ferried across the mighty river that 
whirled their fragile craft towards the Gulf like 
jetsam, they would have known that man was 
destined to conquer the Mississippi, to hold it 
in leash and to make it do his bidding. We 
Stopped at a small station at the water's edge and, 
with nothing more startling than a slight jerk 
and a bump, the long train was divided into sec- 

[318] 



OF THE SOUTH 

tions and put aboard a barge. The d'rowsy 
passengers did not even bother to look out of 
the windows, but Allan and I, unused to such 
spectacles, left the Pullman altogether and 
watched the crossing from the deck of the pon- 
derous ferry. 

Night had snufTed out earth and sky in a 
stiffling blanket of darkness, and we could see 
nothing at first but the two powerful tugs that 
drew us across the river and the towering super- 
structure of the barge, where a watchful pilot 
paced back and forth like a sea captain on the 
bridge of a ship. We went forward, baffled and 
furious, and sought compensation for the black- 
ness of the night in watching the locomotive. 
The big monster was as tranquil as a drowsy 
cab-horse and tended by a solicitous engineer 
who rubbed and oiled his steed with tenderness 
and enthusiasm. I shouted to Allan above the 
thundering reverberations of steam and the 
rushing of water, *T can't see anything! Where 
is the Mississippi?" 

"Under us," Allan answered. 

Providence must have heard my groan of de- 
spair for a great scarlet disc of a moon appeared 
magically on the horizon and rose like a whirl- 
ing pin-wheel of light, trailing fiery reflections 
across the wide expanse of the river. We saw 

[319] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

the Mississippi from bank to bank, rolling 
grandly down to the Gulf, inexpressibly roman- 
tic and beautiful and unforgettable. Providence 
had arranged a spectacular finis to our fog- 
befuddled journey; it was tardy generosity per- 
haps, but we were properly grateful, watching 
the magnificent decor until the ferry bumped 
gently against the shore again and we were 
warned by a dervish of a conductor frantically 
swinging a lantern that if we didn't "get aboard" 
we would be abandoned by the El Paso express 
altogether. 

I made no feint at going to sleep, for as soon 
as the train was safely ashore again and hitched 
together in its proper sequence, we spun mag- 
nificently across Louisiana, Louisiana illumi- 
nated by Providence's moon, no longer scarlet 
but icy white arbd as penetratingly brilliant as 
a spot-light. I have an unfortunate enthusiasm 
for new country. There are people, T know, 
who can sleep soundly in a train that is crossing 
Umbria or climbing the Semmering or rushing 
magnificently across the American desert. And 
I hate them for their indifiference while I envy 
them their somnolence. 

"Mr. Foster" had managed to get compart- 
ments for us and a spotless darkey in a white 
coat "made up" my berth with such cunning art 

[320] 



OF THE SOUTH 

that I should have gone to sleep at once to show 
my appreciation of his handiwork. If we could 
only apprentice our housemaids to Pullman 
porters! Might it not be a money-making 
scheme for some ebony white-coated potentate 
to start a correspondence school for scientific 
bed-making? A Pullman porter folds sheets 
just as a hotel waiter folds napkins — there are 
crepey irregularities and fan plaitings and deco- 
rative creases. A Pullman porter knows to a 
nicety the exact angle of a blanket, the exact 
adjustment of a fat, snow white pillow\ When 
the master bed-maker of the El Paso express 
had backed discreetly out of the compartment, 
wishing me a "very" good night, I surveyed his 
handiwork with a pang of regret, for I did not 
intend to lie in it. I lay, rather, upon it, with 
the pillow tucked cosily behind my head. Then 
I turned out the light and raised the window 
curtain. 

We were rushing smoothly across vast fields. 
Long ditches of shallow water, shining like 
threads of platinum in the white moonlight, 
pointed in oddly converging lines towards the 
horizon. The moon had climbed swiftly, like 
an ambitious society woman, and was sailing 
serenely overhead, crystal clear in a starless sky. 
I watched for an hour. Plain and sky and il- 

[321] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

limitable horizon. ... I watched another hour 
— plain and sky — Texas perhaps. . . . 

Then I fell asleep. 

We were in Houston when I woke and it was 
dawn, a nice, fresh dawn prettily tinted with 
fleecy, gold-lined clouds. Allan was already 
dressed and standing on the station platform 
haloed by clouds of cigarette smoke and in ani- 
mated conversation with the fattest conductor I 
have ever seen. They were reading the latest 
war news in the Houston morning paper and I 
heard the fat conductor say that he would be 
afraid to go by steamer to New York, "what 
with the U-boats and raiders." Allan reminded 
him that war had not been declared, but the con- 
ductor had a low opinion of German military 
methods. 

''You can't count on 'em," he said in a lugu- 
brious voice. "They're just as apt as not to sink 
you before you get to Key West. Travellin' 
alone?" 

Allan confessed that he had a sister in tow. 

"Ain't she afraid?" 

Allan thought not. 

"Well, if / were you and had a sister, I'd go 
back by train. They'll get you as sure as my 
name's Spencer Jones." 

This was professional railroad advice and 

[322] 



OF THE SOUTH 

Allan said stoutly that the sea was good enough 
for him, raiders or no raiders, U-boats or no 
U-boats; he would rather take his chances in the 
Concho than be blown to pieces by dynamite or 
some railroad bridge in the Middle West. The 
fat conductor, who apparently considered us 
both lost, waddled away mumbling, ''They'll get 
youl You watch out. Never saw a German yet 
who wasn't quick on the trigger." 

All we saw of Houston, as we pulled slowly 
out of it again, was forlorn and ugly. Workmen, 
heavy-eyed and morose, plodded to work; some 
of them paused by the tracks to watch the train, 
perhaps envious of its freedom, but none of them 
seemed aware of the magnificent sunrise that 
was doing its best to glorify the drab factories 
and warehouses and to transform the first hour 
of the long day. It is a pity that railroads enter 
cities by the back door, for it would have been 
much nicer, for us at least, if the El Paso express 
had passed through Houston's residential streets. 
Instead, like a shame-faced tramp, it picked its 
way through dreary slums and forlorn, untidy 
yards. 

The approach to Galveston is a spectacular 
exception to the general rule, howxver. The 
casual tourist is entranced before he has fairly 
arrived at the station, for a two-mile causeway 

[323] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

has been thrown out from Galveston Island to 
the Texas mainland. Superlatives are the order 
of the day before Galveston itself has appeared 
on the horizon and superlatives continue to be 
in demand as long as one remains in the city. 
Like Messina, Galveston has been built and re- 
built upon the ruins of itself; it has withstood 
wind, water and fire; it has been blown down, 
flooded and burned, not once but several times. 
And always it has emerged triumphant, the peo- 
ple labouring with the tireless patience of ants 
to cover up the ruin and to forget the cataclysm. 
It is not considered good form to mention 
hurricanes and tidal waves in Galveston; the city 
resents any discussion of her secret infirmity. 
The year 1900 is skipped lightly over by local 
historians and the penny guide books and adver- 
tising pamphlets date everything from 1902. 
Curious tourists are not supposed to notice the 
discrepancy; but it becomes conspicuous when 
one learns that the whole city of Galveston was 
raised nineteen feet — houses, streets, sidewalks, 
sewers, parks and all — not very long after that 
curious omission. Why, one asks, should a mod- 
ern city have been lifted bodily nineteen feet 
into the air unless the inhabitants had an expen- 
sive desire to look down upon the Gulf of Mex- 
ico? And eventually, whether the tourist comes 

[324] 



OF THE SOUTH 

from New England or East Africa, he learns 
the truth. 

For Galveston has an implacable enemy. Like 
Torre Annunziata and Herculaneum, the great 
seaport lives in the shadow of possible destruc- 
tion. The first storm, which tore across the Gulf 
like a devastating fury in September, 1900, prac- 
tically destroyed the city. Wind, tidal wave, 
flood and fire! Small wonder that Galveston 
still shudders at the memory and refuses to 
dwell upon it! Baedeker (whom I should not 
have consulted, considering the tender state of 
German-American sentiment) puts the number 
of victims at an indefinite six or eight thousand. 
The actual toll does not matter. We do 
know that houses were unroofed, smashed to 
splinters, reduced to atoms before the mad on- 
slaught of the hurricane; we do know that Gal- 
veston was cut off from the mainland by terrific 
seas, and buried under a wall of water. We do 
know that people drowned like rats in their 
houses or floated out into the Gulf to perish 
miserably there. And we agree with Galveston 
that the wretched details of all that terror and 
death and destruction are best forgotten. Gal- 
veston determined to go on; the remnant of the 
population, under the leadership of a City Com- 
mission, rebuilt the ruined town and at the same 

[325] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

time, with no frivolous desire to "look down" 
on the Gulf, but with fiery determination to get 
beyond its reach, the Galvestonians raised their 
city nineteen feet. Not content with this, as if 
pumping twenty millions cubic yards of sand 
into the city were a mean accomplishment, a 
concrete sea wall five miles long, seventeen feet 
high and sixteen feet wide was built along the 
water-front — a barrier calculated to rebuff the 
most impudent tidal wave in the world. To cap 
the climax, Galveston was so certain that she 
had conquered her enemy that she built a mil- 
lion dollar hotel directly behind the sea wall. 
Then she sat back, folded her hands and said, 
"Let the wind howl and the sea rage. Galves- 
ton is secure." 

There have been three storms since the epoch- 
making hurricane of 1900. The enraged enemy, 
returning to the attack during the summer of 
1916, bit large pieces out of the sea wall and 
completely wrecked the concrete causeway 
which links the city to Texas. As our train 
crossed the tranquil stretch of water we saw the 
destruction. Huge slabs of concrete are tipped 
on end, smashed, pulverised, tossed about as if 
playful giants had caught them up and thrown 
them down again. The railroad trestle has been 
repaired, but the causeway has been abandoned 

[S26] 




A GRAIN ELEVATOR, AS GRLM AND SOMHRE AS A 
MEDI.T.VAE FORTRESS 



OF THE SOUTH 

to the enemy. Galveston said little about the 
storm, and 1 am quoting the driver of a taxi- 
cab (an uncerain authority) when I venture to 
say that over a hundred people were sacrificed. 
But the sea wall withstood the attack and the 
million dollar hotel, to quote again, not only 
"went on as usual with little or no interruption 
of service," but came out of the maelstrom in- 
tact. 

There is something magnificent in this tenacity 
of purpose. Fancy serving six-course dinners 
while the black hurricane raged outside! Fancy 
bellboys answering bells and carrying clinking 
pitchers of ice water to frightened guests while 
the huge hotel shivered and rocked in the teeth 
of the gale! It makes one shudder for Galves- 
ton's destiny, for man has never defied the ele- 
ments with more impudence or greater self- 
assurance. You may ask favours of nature, but 
you may never command her, and you take your 
life in your hands when you challenge her. Gal- 
veston's million dollar hotel says, "Come, if you 
dare!" I should not care to be in Galveston 
when nature decides to accept the challenge. 
But then I am afraid of wind, mortally afraid 
of it. I am abject and craven and detestable 
in a hurricane. I simply lie down and die. So 
I am possibly prejudiced when I warn Galves- 

[327] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

ton not to boast too smugly of her invincible sea 
wall. Every time I mention it I put down my 
pen and rap three times on wood. But Galves- 
ton is neither Irish nor afraid of storms. She 
pulls herself together after each fresh disaster, 
rebuilds the ruined houses, restrings the tele- 
graph and telephone wires, buries the dead and 
begins again. It would not pay to abandon one 
of the greatest ports in the world, and Ameri- 
cans do not surrender so easily. 

The sea was breaking gently when we were 
there; it beat against the enormous concrete 
barrier with tender little caresses, pretending 
friendship. But still the Gulf seemed over us, 
around us, unavoidable and menacing; it drew 
our gaze just as the slumbering Vesuvius at- 
tracts and repels the Neapolitan. 

After a faultless breakfast at the million dol- 
lar hotel we drove through the city, finding lit- 
tle to admire beyond the magnificent courage 
of its inhabitants and some splendid avenues of 
royal palms. The driver of our taxi-cab wanted 
us to take the Texas Hero monument to our 
hearts, and there were three or four million- 
aires' residences that touched his simple soul 
with awe. He could not understand why we 
insisted upon driving out of the city altogether 
to spend an hour watching a cotton press. He 

[328] 



OF THE SOUTH 

stood at our elbow and murmured invitingly that 
we had not seen the Public Library, the Ball 
School or the City Park. . . . 

But the cotton press was more entertaining 
than a city full of endowed hospitals and public 
schools, and we added to the taxi-cab driver's 
aesthetic confusion by lingering in its vicinity 
long enough for Allan to sketch the press at 
work. A cotton press is a machine gifted with 
uncanny intelligence and the strength of a god. 
It catches a roughly packed bale of cotton, tosses 
it neatly into the exact centre of a woven con- 
tainer, presses it between two enormous steel 
slabs, ejects it and reaches for another. There 
are no variations in its precise and graceful mo- 
tions. Negro workmen step between the presses 
to thread and secure the containers, unconcerned 
and facile, singing softly. And one misstep, one 
miscalculation would roll them out as flat and 
as featureless as pancakes! 

The Concho sailed at noon, so we tore our- 
selves away and hurried to the dock, stopping 
long enough in the city to buy a dozen collars 
for Allan and a long veil for me. A neat trio 
of Haytian stewards fell on our luggage and 
carried it aboard, stowing us away in comfort- 
able cabins on the main deck. A handful of 
guardsmen and some romantic looking Mexicans 

[329] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

in wide-brimmed sombreros shared the forward 
deck in amicable proximity. "Villa, dead or 
alive" had brought the guardsmen to Texas and 
"higher wages, dead or alive" was the bait that 
had lured the Mexicans northward toward snow 
and ice and undreamed of hardships. 

Promptly at noon the little steamer backed 
away from Galveston, turned right about face 
and headed for the Gulf. Behind us we could 
see the plucky city, still touched by the tragedy 
of the past, strangely unstable, transient and 
weird. We drifted slowly along the water-front, 
passing beneath a towering grain elevator, as 
grim and sombre as a mediaeval fortress. There 
were compact rows of docks and wharves, where 
ships crowded to load and unload — freighters, 
tramps, schooners, and two big English steam- 
ers painted grey from bow to stern. We waved 
our hats and cheered the British Jack. At last 
we could! The English crews, as dingy grey as 
their ships, waved back and shouted to us 
"Don't let the Germans get you, Sammy!" 
The Baratarian pirate, Jean La Fitte, was not 
alive, but we were no more secure in the Con- 
cho than we would have been in a Spanish gal- 
leon in the days of Count Bernardo de Galvez, 
Spanish Viceroy of Mexico and patron saint of 
Galveston. . . . 

[330] 



OF THE SOUTH 

"Don't let the Germans get you, Sammy!" 
We waved our hands and laughed. "We 
won't I" 

And the Concho, ignoring such absurdities, 
passed the furthermost tip of Galveston Island 
and entered the dazzling blue of the Gulf. 



[331] 




CHAPTER XIII 

KEY WEST AT DAWN 

T took three days and three nights to 
get from Galveston to Key West. The 
Gulf of Mexico was as unruffled as a 
mirror, and there was nothing to do 
but loll in our steamer chairs while the "tired 
of ages" evaporated from our spirits. The 
Concho was a steamer one somehow cottoned 
to on first acquaintance. She was tidy and 
small, comfortable but not cluttered with luxu- 
ries, and there was a total absence of that dis- 
tressing vibration one feels on fast ships. The 
twenty-eight Mexicans who had come aboard 
at Galveston were bound for the frigid North 
to work "somewhere on the Lehigh Railroad." 
They lay somnolent on the forward deck with 
their hats over their eyes, and only wakened oc- 
casionally to fraternise with the khaki-clad 
guardsmen who had picked up enough pigeon- 
Spanish on the border to carry on a halting con- 
versation. The guardsmen confessed to a sneak- 
ing fondness for the game little peons, but there 

[332] 



OF THE SOUTH 

was nothing black enough in the way of adjec- 
tives to garnish their opinion of the border 
Texans. Their feeling toward the Mexican was 
more or less neutral, but their dislike of the 
Texan was a real and impressive thing. 

Life aboard the Concho was delightful. It 
may have been the geniality of Captain 
Mcintosh, who looked like Wallingford — 
Wallingford in uniform! — and was one of the 
finest types I have encountered in the American 
Merchant Marine service. It may have been 
the Austrian pastry-cook's triumphant cakes 
and pies, or the soft voices and ingratiating 
manners of the Dutch East Indians and 
Haytians in the crew. Or it may have been the 
sea, which never fails to tinge one's own mood 
with its vast impersonality. Or it may have 
been because the Concho was a small ship. The 
giant ocean greyhounds of ante-bellum days were 
meant for the timid landlubber who felt more 
secure, for some inexplicable reason, when there 
were ten stories between him and the deep. For 
my part, I like to hear the slap of the boisterous 
waves against the sides. I like to lean on the 
rail within nose-touch of the patterned foam 
rushing by in endless, dissolving repetition. I 
like to feel the sting of spray tossed back by the 
runting bow. I like to stand by the ventilators 

[333] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

and listen to the muffled clatter and shouting 
down in the boiler room. At night I like to sit 
on the forward deck where I can watch the mast 
light, like a fiery spark, swinging against the 
ice-blue stars. I like to be on intimate terms 
with the sea, never unaware of it but watchful 
and deliciously afraid, as I would fear an in- 
dulgent and unstable god. I like to talk now 
and then to the crew, and if I see the captain 
or the first officer squinting at sun-spots through 
a sextant, I like to be allowed to squint, too. I 
prefer a capstan to the dubious luxury of a 
steamer chair. I like to watch the whirling log- 
line and the wake churned into milky foam by 
the ship's swift passing. I like to lie in my 
berth and watch the black waves heaving above 
the horizon, flecked at their crests with fiery 
phosphorescence. And manifestly I couldn't do 
any of those things aboard what newspaper men 
call a Leviathan. 

Three days and three nights passed slowly in 
a procession of lazy hours. Just after we had 
rounded the clawlike tip of Galveston Island we 
encountered a heavy ground swell which sent 
most of the more imaginative passengers scurry- 
ing to their berths. But once clear of that, we 
moved across the surface of the water like a 
pasteboard ship blown across a marble-topped 

[334] 



OF THE SOUTH 

table. When Galveston had dropped behind 
the horizon, there was no further sign of life 
until we caught the first intermittent flashes of 
the Tortugas Light on the evening of the third 
day. A German raider was supposed to be 
somewhere in the neighbourhood, and although 
war had not yet been declared, there was a cer- 
tain amount of speculation as to whether the 
raider might not precipitate matters if it should 
happen to encounter such a neat, staunch, fat 
little morsel as the Concho. Three of the twelve 
Germans in the Concho's crew had left the ship 
at Galveston to cross the Texan border and go 
into Mexico, probably because they had definite 
work to do there for Germany. The Austrian 
pastry-cook, author of the culinary masterpieces 
I have mentioned before, sat in the galley door 
between his moments of inspiration, looking as 
melancholy as a man can look who is a mountain 
of fat, as pale as dough and clad in a sleeveless 
flannel shirt and an apron. When I had passed 
him several times in my pacing around the deck 
and each time had discovered him with his 
shaven head buried in his arms, I sought the 
chief steward and asked him why a talented 
pastry-cook should abandon himself publicly to 
grief. Were the Germans in the crew planning 
to scuttle the ship? And did the pastry-cook 

[335J 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

know about it? Or was he weeping for his 
government's sins? It seemed to me an exagger- 
ated case of conscience. 

"He is afraid of internment," the steward ex- 
plained. "God knows why, for turn about has 
never been fair play in America, but that poor 
devil had visions of another Wittenberg. He 
owns a little farm in New Jersey, and in the 
summer time he leaves the Concho and potters 
about in his vegetable garden. As far as he can 
understand, that is all over for him. He ex- 
pects to be nabbed and put behind a wire en- 
closure as soon as we touch the pier in New 
York. And I tell you," the steward assured me 
with a grave face, "it is having a bad effect on 
his pastry. I wish I could convince him some- 
how. The cherry tarts weren't up to the 
standard to-day." 

After that, I lost interest in the desserts. It 
always seemed to me that they were flavoured 
with Austrian tears. In spite of my affection for 
Austria, I couldn't quite stick a lachrymose 
souvenir, and the cook was a prey to his terror 
all the way to New York. 

The monotony of the placid Gulf was un- 
broken save for schools of flying fish that 
skimmed the surface of the water like little skip- 
ping-stones and disappeared again in a hoop of 

[336] 




DOLPHINS CAVORTED AT SUNSET, TURNING BEAUTIFUL 
SOMERSAULTS 



OF THE SOUTH 

ripples. Portuguese men-o'-war sailed past in 
squadrons. They looked like large opalescent 
bubbles, but they were amazingly brisk and 
intelligent for jellyfish. With the sail-like mem- 
brane attached to their backs they contrived to 
come about, to tack, to run before the wind — 
in short, to behave like full-rigged ships. I take 
off my hat to a jellyfish that knows enough to 
jibe! Dolphins cavorted at sunset, turning 
beautiful somersaults — the most likable and 
roguish fellows in the sea. And always there 
was an escort of white-breasted gulls following 
close astern. 

As I was the only lady in the first cabin, the 
stewardess was pathetically devoted to me. 
Probably because the poor woman was bored 
and had nothing better to do, she gave her un- 
divided attention to getting me out of bed at 
seven in the morning. On the stroke of the 
minute she applied herself to my door. 

"Miss, breakfast is served." 

'What on earth do you want?" was my greet- 
ing, muffled by as much of the sheet as I could 
draw over my head, for I hate to be stared at at 
seven o'clock in the morning. 

The stewardess always pretended to be sympa- 
thetic after the manner of her kind. She 
manoeuvred to unearth me from under the sheet. 

[337] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

*'I do believe you are seasick. And on a calm 
day, too! Aren't you ashamed?" 

'Tve never been seasick in my life. Go away, 
and shut the door!" 

"Breakfast is ready, Miss." 

"But I don't w^ant breakfast at seven o'clock. 
Go away!" 

"Your brother is on deck. Miss. He's been 
up and out for an hour." (That was a gross 
exaggeration !) "He told me to tell you that you 
are missing everything and how could you ex- 
pect to write a book if you sleep all day?" 

"He said that?" 

"He did, indeed." 

"Well, go away! I want to sleep." 

"There is corn-bread for breakfast, Miss." 
And so on, until she had accomplished her pur- 
pose. 

I have only one thing to thank her for. She 
got me out of bed in time to go ashore at Key 
West. We had caught sight of Tortugas' sultry 
flashes late on Monday night, and had passed the 
light sixty-six miles from Key West while we 
slept. I knew little of Tortugas except that it 
has played the role of an American St. Helena 
for several prisoners — among them the doctor 
who cared for J. Wilkes Booth and who was 
supposed to have been a conspirator in the 

[338] 



OF THE SOUTH 

assassination of Lincoln. The stewardess woke 
me at dawn with the magic words, "Key West 
in twenty minutes, Miss!" And before she had 
fairly opened the door I was on my feet. 

''All right, Fm coming. Twenty minutes, 
did you say?" 

Key West! The Cayo Hueso of the Span- 
iards! The jumping-ofif place; America's 
furthest south — a city to touch the imagination! 
By the time I got out on deck the first faint 
blue of dawn had spread over the sky. The 
Concho had slowed down until the vibrations 
of the screw sounded like a muffled heart beat. 
Key West lay just ahead, a long string of lights 
that drifted toward us across the water. Puffs 
of hot, moist wind brought the odour of the 
wharves — the inexplicable smell of the land. 
And suddenly, as the blue light deepened, we 
saw bulky shadows, vague outlines of houses 
and sheds, a ghostly wireless tower. We heard 
the water lapping the wharf piles, voices, the 
liquid laughter of black men and a chorus of 
yapping dogs. 

"Hi, there, Conchor 

"Hi, you!" 

And as if a veil had been whisked away, we 
saw the wharf just under us and a row of people 
staring up and waving. The mongrel dogs kept 

[389] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

up their infernal howling or piled themselves 
in tangled heaps, snapping and tearing each 
others' ears into ribbons. I have never seen such 
outcasts, such forlorn pariahs of the dog world. 
Slinking, cowardly, shivering — they alternately 
raised their begging eyes to the row of faces 
along the Concho's rail and squatted miserably 
to scratch. 

Key West is the terminus of the Florida East 
Coast Railway, and the joining of the island city 
to the rest of Florida by a series of trestles, 
bridges and concrete viaducts thrown from key 
to key has brought Cuba to within ninety miles 
of the American mainland. The trip from Key 
West to Havana takes no longer than the cus- 
tomary channel passage, and is supposed to be 
one of the most expensive short crossings 
anywhere in the world. Only one meal is served 
during the trip, and as the bit of water between 
Key West and Havana is usually as rough as the 
English Channel in mid-winter, the serving of 
that one meal is more or less of an empty for- 
mality. As one discouraged tourist told me, 
''The trip to Havana is on a par with the ascent 
of Vesuvius — it costs a fortune to go, but it costs 
three times a fortune to get back again. The 
Cuban learns the verb to extort, even if he pre- 
tends ignorance of the verb to cheat — and he 

[340] 



OF THE SOUTH 

can conjugate the verb to wheedle in every one 
of its ninety-nine tenses." 

The engineering feat which put Key West 
conspicuously on the map of Florida and 
brought passengers and freight trains literally 
''overseas" to Cuba's front door, is one of the 
most dramatic and spectacular things railroad- 
ing has ever accomplished, the climax of the 
Flagler system's exploitation of the South. 
Florida dwindles at its furthermost tip into a 
loosely-strung chain of small coralline islands, 
some of them habitable, some of them simply 
ridges of fluted sand, called keys or cayos, which 
divide the Gulf of Mexico from the Straits of 
Florida for over a hundred miles. The railroad 
jumps from key to key with the ease of a colossus 
straddling the globe. Part of the time the con- 
crete arches and ponderous trestles rise directly 
out of the water, so that the approach to Key 
West is not unlike the approach to Venice from 
Mestre, except that the Venetian viaduct is al- 
ways linked with the shore on one hand and 
the city on the other, while the Overseas track 
seems to plunge straight out to sea with no ap- 
parent objective but the horizon. Some of the 
white natives of the Bahama Islands have settled 
in the Florida keys and are called Conchs, a 
name which suits them to perfection. They are 

[341] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

nearly always fishermen, for they live in a 
piscatorial paradise, a sort of happy-hunting- 
ground for the confirmed angler. The waters 
of the keys are swarming with every known 
variety of fish from the mild and gentle nibbler 
to the gamest deep-sea monster. I should think 
that a fisherman would have to do little more 
than whistle for his living down there. Key 
West is famous for its turtle soup, made from 
the big deep-sea turtles which are caught in the 
neighbourhood. But after I had seen the pa- 
thetic, ugly, unwieldy creatures on the docks, 
with their flat feet pierced and tied together with 
ropes, I could not have managed a spoonful of 
the detestable potage. The turtles were brought 
in by the hundreds and crucified in the most re- 
volting and ghastly manner; the twisting of their 
parrot-like heads, the futile and agonised wav- 
ings of their legs, their grotesque sufferings have 
made turtle soup forever an impossibility as far 
as I am concerned. And oh, the smell of turtles, 
dead turtles, drying turtles, turtles in their death 
agonies, turtles spliced and bound, but still alive, 
for shipment! The odour assailed us as soon as 
we docked at Key West, and I was not happy 
until a broad expanse of water and a fresh breeze 
had dimmed the memory of it and made breath- 
ing endurable again. I cannot understand the 

[342] 



OF THE SOUTH 

aesthetic reasoning which shows you a wharf 
full of stinking, tortured turtles and then says, 
"Now you must eat our turtle soup! We pride 
ourselves that here in Key West you may taste 
the uttermost essence of turtle soup, the master- 
piece, the climax!" Undoubtedly. But I reeled 
past the temptation, holding the tip of my nose. 

Every traveller we had met in the South had 
consistently blackened Key West's reputation. 
It was dirty, the people were mongrel, the taxi- 
cabs were rusty, the hotels were bad, there was 
nothing on earth to see but a banyan tree. 
"Don't go there," we had been told, "unless you 
are sure you can get out again in twenty-four 
hours." It is apparently fashionable to call Key 
West dirty, just as it was fashionable to say of 
Venice, in those dim, legendary days before the 
war, "Venice is beautiful, my dear, but how the 
canals smell!" One gives with the left hand 
and takes away with the right. The truth of 
the matter is, Venice doesn't smell except in the 
sultry dog-days of August and September, and 
Key West — at dawn — isn't dirty at all. I almost 
hesitate to make the statement for fear I will be 
called unobservant; Key West is so overwhelm- 
ingly accused of slovenliness! 

Perhaps the freshness of the dawn purified the 
city; perhaps the heavy dews of the semi-tropi- 

[343] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

cal night had washed it clean. Whatever the 
reason was, Key West sparkled for us. We took 
an automobile driven by a dark, flashing and 
very black-eyed Cuban boy who was lying in 
wait for possible tourists from the Concho just 
outside the entrance to the wharf. The miser- 
able dogs followed us, whining and begging 
and snapping until we had climbed into the ma- 
chine. The Cuban scattered the poor creatures 
by starting the car with a terrific jerk and an 
ear-splitting squawk of the horn. A fresh breeze 
had come up with the increasing light of day — 
very cool and invigorating, life-giving after the 
stifling calm of the night. It fluttered out the 
ends of my veil so that they flapped like a sail as 
we turned away from the water-front and en- 
tered the city. The sky was still untouched by 
the direct rays of the sun; the blue had given 
way to a luminous pearl-grey and the horizon 
was banked with broken thunder clouds, jagged 
and blue-black, which sprang toward the arch 
of the sky like torn pennants. Key West was 
asleep. The blinds were shut like lids over tired 
eyes. The shutters of the shops were closed; 
there were no motors, no horses, no pedestrians 
on the street; even the big, sulphur-yellow Flag- 
ler hotel looked absolutely deserted and empty, 

[344] 



OF THE SOUTH 

as forlorn and dreary as a summer hotel in mid- 
winter. 

The Cuban boy asked us where we wanted 
to go. We had no idea. We told him to take 
us "around Key West," and that we wanted to 
see everything there was to see. He looked 
doubtful, as if he would have preferred being 
given a definite destination. Responsibility is 
irksome to a handsome boy, but being asked to 
entertain two insane travellers who wanted to 
look at a city before daybreak taxed this one's 
indulgence. He considered the thing a moment 
as if he wondered what on earth he could show 
us at that God-forsaken hour. Then his face 
brightened. 

"There's the banyan tree," he said. 

"Is that all there is in Key West?" I de- 
manded. 

iEsthetically there was apparently nothing 
else. The banyan tree at Key West carries a 
heavy burden. Like St. Peter's, it must never 
disappoint the pilgrim. We decided to wait 
until after dawn to see it, for we felt that such 
a tourist-sop must be as self-conscious as the 
Sphinx. Faint puffs of rosy light were be- 
ginning to touch the peaks of the thunder clouds 
on the horizon, so we told the Cuban that the 

[345] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

banyan tree could wait for the sunrise. He must 
take us out of the city. 

There is a single main street (which is not 
really a slip of the pen, for most cities have main 
streets crossing each other at right angles), and 
we followed it to the outskirts of Key West 
where the one and two-storied frame houses 
thinned out into a fringe of pretty bungalows 
and more pretentious private houses. In the 
luminous light the green of the gardens was in- 
tensified a hundred times so that every leaf and 
blade of grass was unnaturally brilliant in hue. 
We passed a cottage which was buried under an 
avalanche of purple bougainvillea. The streets 
were clear of people and of dust, and we rushed 
smoothly forward against the boisterous wind 
as if we were the only living creatures on the 
face of the earth. The road passed the last of 
the bungalows, ran close to two large cigar fac- 
tories where, for a moment, we could smell the 
fragrant, sweet odour of tobacco, and then 
curved away toward the sea again between fields 
and a tangled growth of scrub and hardy, shiny- 
leaved bushes. The young Cuban urged the 
motor up to forty-five and we spun magnificently 
toward the sunrise. 

Gold flakes of light sprayed up from behind 
the purple thunder heads and floated to the very 

[346] 



OF THE SOUTH 

apex of the sky to gild every wisp and shred of 
vapour. A magnificent conflagration blazed in 
our eyes. The coming of the sun seemed to stir 
the sluggish and immovable thunder clouds into 
action. They rolled majestically aside like the 
parting of a great curtain to reveal the very heart 
of the burning day as it stepped over the horizon. 
The tumbled peaks took on magnificent shapes, 
thrust higher and higher, converged, parted, flat- 
tened themselves into anvil-like plateaux. The 
gold light turned to saffron, then to rose, then 
to a flaming and indescribable scarlet. And as 
we came within sight of the sea we saw that it 
had turned from black to a vivid ice-green — a 
Winslow Homer sea laced with sandy shoals and 
dotted with shallow islands. 

The sun came up, like Kipling's sun, with a 
crash, and climbed with incredible speed above 
the thunder clouds. They had played their part 
in the morning pageant and retreated, like 
circus supers, over the edge of the world and 
out of our sight. We drove to the end of the 
boulevard and turned back just where the gov- 
ernment wireless station is being built. 

Groups of workmen were trudging out to the 
cigar manufactories as we entered the city — 
Cubans, swarthy and slender, Spaniards, the in- 
evitable negro. And Key West was waking. 

[347] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

The boisterous wind rattled the cocoa-palms and 
the wide, stifif leaves of the sword-palms. Win- 
dows opened here and there and curious eyes 
peered at us. Shopkeepers were opening the 
doors of their shops or sweeping off their front 
steps. A drowsy night clerk stood on the porch 
of the Overseas Hotel and stretched himself, 
taking deep breaths of the morning air. The 
sun gilded the ugly little houses and glorified 
them; it was all indescribably fresh and 
sparkling and buoyant. 

"And now," the young Cuban said, witH the 
air of the custode of Santa Maria Novella when 
he opens the door of the Spanish Chapel, "I will 
show you the banyan tree." 

He wanted us to get the full impact of the 
sensation, so he turned in at the barracks gate 
at top speed and brought us up to the banyan 
with a flourish. I don't know what I had ex- 
pected. I remember that I had formed a mental 
picture of a colossus of a tree, an octupus, a maze 
of branches. A banyan, to me, had always meant 
something which begins by being a sprout and 
winds up as a forest. The banyan at Key West 
disappointed me. It did all it was supposed to 
do; it struck its branches down into the ground, 
it multiplied its trunks, it was as smooth and 
grey as a snake's skin. But it was not large 

[348] 




niK HOISTl'KorS WIXI) RATILKD 1111: COCOA-PALMS 



OF THE SOUTH 

enough, and it had been whitewashed. I 
couldn't manage to squeeze out a superlative. 
I gazed on the banyan in utter, abysmal silence, 
aware that something was expected of me but 
utterly incapable of filling in the conversational 
gaps. 

*Tt's the banyan," the Cuban said, making his 
eyes very round. And then, seeing that he had 
failed, he made a supreme effort. "Gee," he 
said with a good deal of passion, "don't you see 
the banyan?" 

Even this left me unmoved. The Cuban gave 
me a savage look and left the banyan with a 
violent jerk. We spun out of the barracks yard 
on two wheels, narrowly missing the toes of a 
sentry on guard at the gate, who was so surprised 
that he saluted. 

The Concho was "waiting breakfast" for us 
when we got back after a zigzag impression of 
Key West's shopping street. Going aboard was 
like returning to a comfortable home. We 
smiled at the familiar faces of the Haytian stew- 
ards who were leaning on the rail, all making 
striking contrasts of themselves by wearing 
crisply clean white coats. As soon as we had 
swallowed a cup of coffee we went on deck to 
watch the unloading of a huge shovel which had 
been lashed to the forward deck at Galveston 

[349] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

and had been the bane of the Captain's existence 
all the way across the Gulf. He stood on the 
bridge and roared choleric comments on the 
stupidity of his crew, the lateness of the hour, 
the heat of the day, the feebleness of the steam 
winch and the general cussedness of everything. 
While he roared, in his good-natured but per- 
fectly effective way, the first officer became fever- 
ishly, acutely busy. He was an intense English- 
man, a fellow who took everything too seriously 
and who invested simple duties with a profound 
importance. Now he stripped off his coat, knit- 
ted his brows, gave orders, promptly took them 
back again, hopped from one side of the deck 
to the other, as active and as efficient as a rabbit. 
The Captain leaned from the bridge, with his 
Wallingford cigar protruding from one corner 
of his mouth like a torpedo projectile, and added 
colour to the moment with a few rumbling and 
highly picturesque suggestions. 

The big shovel rose inch by inch clear of the 
deck, the ropes and chains that held it screech- 
ing and shrieking under the strain. A long line 
of negroes on the wharf below tugged to swing 
the obstinate mass of iron away from the ship. 
They grunted and laughed — big, black fellows 
in blue jeans and tattered shirts, barefooted, in- 
conceivably lazy. They laid hold of the rope 

[350] 



OF THE SOUTH 

with their powerful hands and swayed and 
jerked in unison. 

While we watched, a tall, bullet-headed negro 
in a bathing-suit appeared on the wharf and of- 
fered to dive for us. 

"Gimme a quarter!" he shouted, "gimme a 
quarter! Down heah. In the water. Quick! 
Gimme a quarter, please, sir." Then he capered 
and grinned and made wide gestures. "Watch 
me dive. Dive fob a quarter. Down heah. 
Right heah in the water. Throw it, please, sir!" 

There was no resisting him. He scrambled to 
the top of one of the wharf piles and balanced 
there a moment, looking like a wet codfish. The 
quarter flashed through the air and he dived 
after it, as straight and clean a dive as any I 
have ever seen. For an instant his squirming 
black body hung below the surface of the water, 
then he came up, spluttering and laughing, with 
the quarter between his teeth. He was aware of 
his talents, for when one of the stewards threw 
him a dime he let it sink slowly out of sight with- 
out stirring a muscle to dive for it. 

At half-past nine, the shovel having been 
dumped on the wharf, much to the relief of the 
crew, the Concho churned her way backwards 
into Key West Harbour. As she turned slowly 
around, swinging her nose towards the Straits 

[351] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

of Florida, we saw Cayo Hueso for the first 
time, the mysterious, turtle-backed island where 
the Spanish sailors and explorers found nothing 
but human bones — the Key West of to-day. It 
rose out of the smiting green of the shallow 
water like a tropical mirage, veiled in hot mists, 
linked to America by the far-flung viaduct and 
still as remote and strange as only a city in the 
sea can be. 

We passed the destroyer No. 20 and a big 
South American tramp on their wa^ inta the 
harbour. Small fishing schooners and launches 
bobbed in our wake. At noon, Key West had 
dropped behind the horizon. We followed the 
Keys northward until sunset. And that night, 
as we lounged in our deck chairs after dinner, 
we saw the diamond strung lights of Palm 
Beach. 



[352] 



CHAPTER XIV 

WIND, WAVES AND HOME AGAIN 




E had taken aboard a handful of pas- 
sengers at Key West — some sea cap- 
tains, the crew of a wrecked schooner, 
a tourist or two and a trio of gam- 
blers. The gamblers sat like poisonous spiders 
in the smoke-room and lured first one and then 
another of the male passengers of the Concho in- 
to a losing game of cards. They all played and 
they all lost. And they all played again! 

The captain of the wrecked schooner, a little 
wisp of a man, went on ridding himself of his 
worldly goods at the rate of fifteen dollars a 
game until the sleek gamblers had emptied the 
pockets of his decent blue serge clothes. The 
Swedish first mate, who had been twice "tor- 
pedoed" in the English Channel and who should 
have developed a bump of caution, was drawn 
to the smoke-room irresistibly. My chair was 
near the door and when I turned my head I 
could see the three sinister profiles of the nro- 

[353] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

fessional card players, pallid as Monte Carlo 
croupiers — one wearing the traditional spade 
beard, the other two smooth and shaven. And I 
saw the victims pass, one by one, into the flood 
of light that fell from the smoke-room door 
across the deck; I saw them pivot there, balance, 
and finally go in. Then, with their hats pushed 
back and their brows wrinkled and their eyes 
full of doubt and rage they played the gamblers' 
"simple little game" and lost and lost and lost. 

Once I spoke to the Swedish first mate about 
it from the security of my deck chair. I had 
seen so many men swallowed up by the smoke- 
room door that I thought I would try to probe 
the reason. 

"They're gamblers," I remarked, as the first 
mate hesitated there, "aren't they?" 

"I know, m'am," he answered, taking a puff 
at his cigarette and then throwing it over the 
rail, a little comet-flash of fire against the dark- 
ness of the sea, "I know, ma'am, but I hate to let 
men like them get the best of me. Crooks, all 
three of 'em." 

"Of course." 

He hesitated a moment longer. "I'll tell you 
what," he volunteered. "They got all I earned 
comin' from Tilbury to Key West — every penny 
of it." 

[354] 



OF THE SOUTH 

"And you are going to play again?" 

"Well, you see, ma'am, 1 hate to let men like 
them get the best of me." 

"They always do, don't they? You're no 
match for them. They travel between New 
York and Havana, following tourist dollars. 
You are small pickings for them, if you will 
pardon me. The money you risked your life to 
earn will no more than pay their passage from 
Key West to New York." 

The first mate grinned. "Risked my life?" 
he repeated softly. "I should say! Twice I've 
started out from England in a ten thousand ton 
ship and have had it blown from under me." 
He whistled a long, slow whistle. "Yes, m'am! 
You might call it a risk." 

"I suppose you are going back again?" 

"From New York." 

"Aren't you afraid?" 

He shook his head. "They say in English, 
'three times and out.' No, Fm not afraid." 

He glanced in through the open door of the 
smoke-room. The three gamblers sat knee to 
knee, offering a "simple little game" to any one 
who cared to play. The first mate tipped his 
hat to me. 

"Well," he said jauntily, "I guess Fll go in." 

The wisp of a sea captain had followed him, 

[355] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

but since his pockets were empty he stopped in 
the band of light, rocked on the toes and heels of 
his creaking black shoes and gazed longingly 
after the bold first mate. 

"Are you going to play?" I asked. 

The wisp of a captain spun around to stare 
at me. *'Me?" he demanded, in a startled whis- 
per. "I borrowed fifty dollars in Key West and 
they got that inside of two minutes last night. 
No, I'm not goin' to play, m'am. But I'll tell 
you — if I had five hundred dollars I'd bust that 
combination." 

"Oh," I said, pretending innocence, "do you 
think they're gamblers?" 

"I know it," thundered the captain, spitting 
violently over the rail. 

"Why don't you tell Captain Mcintosh?" 

"Can't catch 'em. No one could. They're 
eels, not men. They got my fifty dollars quick 
as that, and everything as easy and nice and 
honest." He shook his head. "I'd ought to have 
learned better, but I never seem to. I like a 
game. Always playing games one way or an- 
other. My schooner " 

"Your schooner? What about her? Some 
one said you lost her." 

The captain sat down on the edge of Allan's 
steamer chair (Allan, of course, had been in the 

[356] 



OF THE SOUTH 

smoke-room for an hour) and fixed me with his 
weak, watery blue eyes, eyes full of vague 
dreams and gentle, ineffectual longings, the eyes 
of a lovable failure. "I'll tell you about my 
schooner. I called her the Charles Perkins 
after my father. He was a captain, too, and took 
his ship from Maine to the Azores back in 1838. 
He was a man of his word, my father, and my 
schooner took after him, never failed me, never 
played me a dirty trick — as trustworthy a ship 
as ever you S'aw. But all of us gets old, and 
the Charles Perkins got old, too. Old and tired, 
like a human being. You remember the storm, 
two weeks ago?" 

"Yes. We were in Pensacola." 

"I was off Tortugas, in the Gulf, beating in 
to Key West. Middle of the night, cold, big 
seas. You remember?" 

I said I did. 

The captain shrugged his shoulders. "The 
Charles Perkins/' he said, "took it into her head 
that she wasn't going a step further. Yes, m'am, 
and she'd never failed me before. Sprung a leak 
and began to go down by the bow. I can't tell 
you how surprised I was. I couldn't see my 
hand before my face and I couldn't hear a word 
I said, but I shouted at her that I deserved 
something better than drowning like a rat in 

[357] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

the Gulf of Mexico. Tou're a Perkins,' I says 
to her, 'and a Perkins keeps his word. A 
Perkins is a good friend. You stay afloat until 
morning. Going back on me like this!' The 
crew thought I was crazy, but the old Charles 
Perkins heard and she understood. She floated 
all night, sunk up to her neck in the seas and 
wallowing like a cow in a ditch. Floated, with 
a hole in her as big as a church door. What 
d'you think of that?" 

"I think she was a good sort." 

"She was. At dawn, just as the wind calmed 
down a little and a big tramp eased up over the 
horizon, she took one long look at me, sighed 
deep down in herself and sank like a stone." 

The captain got up, went to the rail, gazed 
down into the black water a moment and then 
came hurriedly back. "Like a stone," he re- 
peated. "What do you think of that?" 

And before I could answer he rushed along 
the deck, hiding his tears behind a huge red 
handkerchief. 

There were many such stories. The guards- 
men on the forward deck had tales of the throb- 
bing nights along the border and of blazing 
days between the parched desert and the wither- 
ing sky. The English fiirst officer and the smil- 
ing, red-cheeked German mate, and the hatchet- 

[358] 



OF THE SOUTH 

faced watchman all had stories. The captain 
was a treasure house of yarns, and the Charles 
Perkins shabby crew could have supplied Con- 
rad with themes to last another magnificent life- 
time. There was a scarlet-headed Irishman with 
a Jewish nose and a mouth full of dazzling gold 
teeth who developed, upon acquaintance, a 
whimsical fancy and a vast knowledge of men. 
He sold furs in the far South and had naturally 
acquired a broad and unending optimism. There 
was a musical New Englander who played "Still 
Wie Die Nacht" from morning to night and 
brought floods of tears from the lachrymose 
pastry cook. There was a little old man in the 
black alpaca jacket who "took his vacation" on 
the Concho every year and improved the shin- 
ing hours by gilding the railings and pillars and 
carved ornamentations of the dining saloon. A 
perfect frenzy of gilding seized him as we ap- 
proached New York. A daredevil negro was 
sent aloft to unscrew the big gold balls that 
tipped the ship's masts and to lower them to the 
deck for the little old man's ministrations. 
Every one stood on the forward deck and craned 
their necks and stared into the face of the blaz- 
ing sky at the climbing negro who curled his 
legs around the mast and lifted himself inch by 
inch toward his goal. And the captain, with his 

[359] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

cigar turned upward at the extreme angle of an 
anti-aircraft gun, warned me to stand well out 
of the way. "If he should fall, you know " 

Oh, there was no end of excitement. The fire- 
men became incendiary (small wonder!) and 
fought like demons in the boiler room; the 
Mexicans caught the fever and attacked, not 
their enemies the guardsmen, but one another. 
A miniature German-Mexican war raged below 
decks, and while I cowered in delicious fright in 
my steamer chair, expecting almost anything, a 
fire-eating Kain-tuckian who had the next chair 
produced a six-shooter, juggled it carelessly and 
told me to "never you mind. I could pick ofif 
the whole crew of 'em, m'am. Just you sit 
quiet." 

I sat quiet, hoping that the howling Mexicans 
would disrupt onto the main deck and that I 
would see the little Kain-tuckian in action. He 
rested the six-shooter on the arm of his chair 
and talked about the price of eggs. That, I sup- 
pose, was calculated to quiet me, but afterwards, 
when the Mexicans had been restored to peace 
and had kissed each other tenderly, the disap- 
pointed Kain-tuckian told me wonderful stories 
of his bloodthirsty youth. He had taken part in 
countless battles with moonshiners and outlaws 
— he had been wounded, he had killed, he had 

[360] 



OF THE SOUTH 

had hairbreadth escapes from unspeakable 
dangers. He was the living embodiment of a 
Richard Harding Davis hero — Captain Mack- 
lin at fifty. And how he could talk! Life — 
romantic, delectable, impossible life — rolled ofif 
the tip of his tongue like honey. He was the 
legendary adventurer with the gift of gab, and 
from morning to night the glorious impossibili- 
ties were spun for my delectation. I could not 
keep the discovery to myself; it was all super 
"copy," but since Allan does not write stories 
I allowed him to share the Kain-tuckian's yarns 
with me. 

"Dare I write them?" I asked Allan one 
morning at breakfast. 

"Write what?" 

"Those 'moonshine' tales — I could make a for- 
tune." 

"Some one else has already made that par- 
ticular fortune," Allan decided, and my heart 
dropped into my boots. 

"D'you mean that they are old stories?" I 
gasped. 

"Old as the Aztec ruins," Allan answered, and 
winked at Captain Mcintosh. 

Oh, it was not stupid, this coming from 
Southern seas into the grey waters of the North! 
We followed the Gulf Stream for two nights 

[361] 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

and two days, rushing smoothly forward across 
the patterned water. The sky was a beautiful 
pageant, a procession of immaculate clouds that 
rolled from horizon to horizon, wrapped in 
white robes, trailing their feet in the sea and 
thrusting their heads into a glory of light. 
Clouds of flying fish sprayed before us, dolphins 
and white-breasted gulls followed astern and 
the sea was deeply blue, black-blue save where 
the crested waves turned over at their tips and 
broke in a spreading fan of milky foam. The 
South had not dropped behind — we were linked 
to it by the endless wake left by the hurrying 
Concho across the brilliant sea. Sometimes we 
saw the sandy shores of Florida and long, white 
beaches fringed with tufted palms. Sometimes 
the land receded and the limitless sea sur- 
rounded us. Always the air was mild and in- 
finitely fragrant. Ships rose above the horizon 
trailing long banners of oily smoke, crossed our 
bow and passed, going down to the Islands or to 
South America. Tide rifts, like periscopes 
awash, followed us as long as we stayed in the 
hot Gulf Stream. Night swarmed with blue 
stars and a late moon climbed into the sky and 
flooded the world with phosphorescent white- 
ness. 

Then miraculously the world grew grey and 

[362] 



OF THE SOUTH 

we passed out of the brilliant South into the 
colourless North. Gusts of wind shook the 
Concho, the seas piled up, slate-grey, furious, 
and slapped the bow resoundingly, throwing 
clouds of icy spray across the decks. The 
Mexicans went below to chatter and to repent 
at their leisure. The drenched ship wallowed 
deeper and deeper, the scudding clouds shut out 
the world. And Allan and I, wrapped to our 
blue noses in great coats and mufflers, stared 
through the black squalls toward New York and 
sighed — for we were going home again to 
snow, ice, bitter winds, routine, work — and we 
had just learned how to play! We had just 
learned to love the dreamy and romantic South. 
The Concho, reeling through the mountainous 
seas, was taking us to reality. One by one the 
octopus arms of the great city reached out to 
draw us back again. Lightships, heaving drunk- 
enly, and a great tide of steamers rushing west 
and south across our path — New York! We 
sensed it before the flickering lights of Asbury 
Park warned us that the voyage was nearly over. 
We waited until the Concho has passed Sandy 
Hook and had anchored for the night under the 
outstretched arm of flamboyant Mother Lib- 
erty. We could hear the city, grumbling and 
groaning faintly. We could see the myriad 



OLD SEAPORT TOWNS 

lights in its towers and pinnacles. We were 
apart from it, still mysteriously caught into our 
brief dream. A light powder of snow fell gen- 
tly on the Concho's decks and rimmed the spars 
and rails and touched our cheeks with caressing 
fingers. It veiled the crowded harbour and 
vested Madame Liberty in white. Ferry boats 
passed bearing black crowds 

"Home," we said. 

Need I tell you that we sighed? And we part 
from you, dear Reader, patient, consoling, for- 
giving Reader, with a sigh. For we were leav- 
ing you who have gone with us on our long 
pilgrimage and we were leaving the splendid, 
the magnificent South. Think of us leaning on 
the Concho's rail, shrouded in the gentle snow, 
with our eyes on New York and a sigh for the 
South in our full hearts. 



THE END 



[364] 

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